


Worthy of the Crown

by Slavok



Category: Wakfu
Genre: Adventure, Dragons, Eliatropes, Epic, Gen, King - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-01-18
Updated: 2015-03-19
Packaged: 2017-11-25 23:58:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 17
Words: 62,698
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/644330
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Slavok/pseuds/Slavok
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The World of Twelve is not ready for the Eliatrope people, and Yugo is not ready to be their king. But one way or another, Yugo is going to bring them back, because the world may need them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. To be a King

To Be A King

The many peoples of the World of Twelve plowed their fields, hunted their forests, and built their cities on solid rock, barely conscious of the fact that their world was not one of land, but of water, a few isolated peaks piercing through the endless sea. The world as a whole was like that as well, an island soaring through the infinite, almost empty, space.

It wasn't always like that. Once, before the Ogrest flooded the world with his sorrow, the world was a drier, gentler place where the followers of the Twelve Gods, from the fierce Sacrier to the avaricious Enutrof, blamed themselves for their misfortune and not a legendary calamity. Back then, they could walk or ride from any major city to any other. These days, they had to sail across the blue, or, in Yugo's case, zaap.

Yugo the Eliatrope fell upwards and downwards, but always forwards. He drew small, blue portals, the signature ability of his race, and threw them into his path, redirecting his momentum, but never breaking it. His brother, Adamai, the white dragon, flew beside him.

"Look, Yugo, land!" Adamai called. "I can't believe that you managed to zaap the whole way."

"I can't believe that you wouldn't—let me ride on your back," Yugo replied, his words interrupted by his own portals.

"It's good exercise," Adamai replied lightly, defying gravity with supernatural ease. He could shapeshift into many different forms, many of which could fly and some that didn't even need wings. "You'll build up endurance this way."

Yugo didn't respond, and instead focused on the shoreline which stood as the border as his second favorite place in the whole world. Adamai had a point, as usual. Yugo was the only Eliatrope in the world and he had a destiny that he would not hide from. No one, not even Yugo himself, knew what he was capable of, and a time when no one was actively trying to kill him was as good a time as any to test his limits. If that meant making a simple journey nearly impossible, then so be it.

Yugo reached the shoreline more quickly than any ship or eagle and collapsed on the beach in exhaustion. "Yeah!" he said triumphantly, punching the air. "Made it!"

Adamai hovered some thirty feet above the ground before he joined his brother. A single massive tree stood in the middle of the Sadida Kingdom, towering over the forest like any other tree towers over a field of grass. The Tree of LIfe had nearly been destroyed along with the entire Sadida people by a Xelor with an artifact of the Eliatrope people. Adamai smiled wryly. The World of Twelve would soon have more than a few Eliatrope relics to deal with. He dropped to the ground next to Yugo.

"I never should have doubted you," he said.

"I wouldn't have minded," Yugo replied. "How long did it take us?"

"Forever," he replied with an exasperated sigh. "It would have taken Phaeris what, half an hour?

"In his sleep," Yugo laughed. "We still have a ways to go before we catch up to him."

"Well I'm ready whenever you are, bro."

"You're right, we can't stop now. We're almost there!" Yugo stood up more quickly than he should have and the blood rushed from his head. Zaapping the entire way across the sea left his knees feeling weak and he wasn't used to using that much Wakfu out of a fight.

Adamai sighed and transformed into a scaraleaf. "Just get on my back and I'll carry you the rest of the way." Almost was a relative term, and while they were close enough to see the Tree of Life, they were also close enough to see the surrounding mountains.  
Yugo looked up. "Really?"

"Sure," he said. "Besides, you're an Eliatrope. People expect you to arrive on the back of a dragon. Though I reserve the right to make fun of your weight."

Yugo jumped through a portal and dropped onto his back. "Deal."

WWW

In all their travels, the Brotherhood of the Tofu never turned away from someone who needed help. Bakers, merchants, small towns, no one was too small to go unnoticed or two great to be ignored. Often those they saved had nothing to offer more than their gratitude, but once the Brotherhood of the Tofu had managed to save an entire kingdom, and the Sadida had never forgotten them.

"Look! Up there!"

"Is that Yugo?"

"With that hat? Definitely!"

Yugo waved to nearby Sadida children, gripping onto one of Adamai's horns as his brother flew upside down. They didn't have time to stop and chat with locals, though. There was someone they wanted to see.

They flew through a palace window and Yugo jumped off Adamai's back, landing in a boardroom. Prince Armand and King Oakheart Sheran Sharm poured over a map in the middle of the room, and neither showed much surprise at seeing the boy and his dragon.

"You're back, Yugo," Armand noted calmly. "I thought things were a bit too quiet. Adamai, always a pleasure."

Az flew out of Yugo's pocket and started flying around. "I'm not interrupting anything, am I?" Yugo asked.

The king sighed and relaxed into a majestic armchair. "I needed a break anyway." He turned to his son. "We never had much of a navy anyway, and if they prove hostile, we'll deal with them on land."

"Then that's that, then," Armand said. He turned to Yugo. "You're here to see Amalia, I take it."

"Yeah, is she here?"

"I certainly hope so," he said. "I'll tell her you've come."

Armand walked out of the room, his posture uncharacteristically slumped. Yugo frowned. Armand had always seemed proud and confident, but now he just seemed tired. "Is everything alright, your Highness?"

"Yes, yes," the king assured him. "Diplomacy and politics wear one down is all. The only appeal of war is that it is more straightforward than tariffs and trade embargos. But a king can't take the simple road all the time, nor should he. But enough about that, Yugo. What brings you here? And how is Alibert doing? Well, I hope."

Yugo grinned. "Better than well! He knows how to make bread!"

King Sheran Sharm raised an eyebrow. "Oh. I assume he couldn't before?"

Yugo shook his head. "No, but then I ran into the greatest baker in Amakna, and when I got back home I passed on everything he taught me, and Papa Alibert hasn't burnt it since." He beamed with pride. "Which is great because Grougal does that for him now." Moving away from the Sadida Kingdom hadn't made the baby dragon any less of a handful, and it took none other than Phaeris the Powerful to keep him in line.

Yugo sat down into a chair that was too big for him. "Hey, what you said about being a king...do you think that Armand will make a good king?"

"Armand? Yes, I believe he will. He has much to learn, but he has much time to learn it." He smiled wryly. "I don't intend on dying soon."

Yugo smiled, but he didn't feel it. He had too many questions that he couldn't answer, some he wasn't sure had answers. "What makes a good king?" he asked softly. Adamai caught his eye, but didn't say anything.

The king shrugged his shoulders. "Well, the king has to be in charge of everything and everyone comes to him with their problems and expects him to solve them, so to be a good king, you have to be good at everything."

Yugo frowned. "Oh."

"But that isn't very helpful," King Oakheart continued, stroking his thick, green beard thoughtfully. "There was a council a few months ago while you were seeking Shinonome's Dofus. The leaders of the world came together, everyone from the Cra Matriarch to the Xelor Timelord. All of them were...effective rulers, though I wouldn't turn my back on some of them. It helps for a king to be intelligent, but the Iop ruler manages. Kings are usually strong, but in times of peace they seldom find the need for it. Most weaknesses can be covered by the support of those loyal to the king, but the one thing that can't be covered is the king's ability to understand who is trustworthy, and he must also understand when he needs help. He also needs to understand the needs of his people." He paused thoughtfully. "Yes. What a king needs most is an understanding heart. For that alone there is no substitute"

Yugo looked up. He had expected something more like courage or a keen mind. "Really?"

The king nodded. "But you can't always choose what you're good at, so you just do your best and hope it works out."

Yugo smiled. "If it means anything, I think you're a great king." The best Yugo had ever met by a long shot. In the end, that was why Qilby could never be the king the Eliatropes needed. Even after everything, people, lives, and entire worlds were insignificant.

King Oakheart laughed. "Well, my kingdom has survived me so far. The real test is to see if it can survive my heir."

The door opened and Amalia stepped in. "If this is about the carnivorous plants again..." She stopped when she saw Yugo. "Yugo! When did you get here?"

Yugo grinned widely. She hadn't changed a bit. "I just got here. I'm bringing the Brotherhood of the Tofu back together."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've been wanting to do a Wakfu fanfiction for ages. I'm not that thrilled with the first chapter, but you have to start somewhere. I'll go into more detail about the background and what happened between now and the last episode in later chapters. Anyway, let me know what you think.


	2. Reunion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Some humans would do anything to see if it was possible to do it. If you put a large switch in some cave somewhere, with a sign on it saying 'End-of-the-World Switch. PLEASE DO NOT TOUCH', the paint wouldn't even have time to dry.”   
> ― Terry Pratchett, Thief of Time

Reunion

"What do you mean they're not here?"

"I mean they're not here," Amalia said flippantly.  _I'm here,_  she thought with irritation.  _Isn't that good enough?_

Yugo looked down. "I just figured that I'd find them here."

"Well, they left. They have their own lives, you know."

"Huh," Yugo said, sitting down. They were still in the official boardroom, not where Amalia would have preferred their reunion, and her dad had left. "Did they say where they went?"

"Ruel left when we wouldn't let him dig for treasure," she said. "He yelled something about ingratitude and how he was going to look for gold elsewhere. Eva and Pinpin went off on their own, and I haven't heard from them."

Yugo looked up with concern. "Isn't she your bodyguard?"

"And has been for the past eight years," she said with a nod. "She's earned some time off. A sabbatical or something. I'm kind of worried about why she hasn't written me yet. I mean, it's been two months already." She sighed. "I guess wherever they are, they're really busy. Anyway, how've you been?"

"Great! Papa Alibert is still taking care of Chibi, and Phaeris moved into a nearby cave in the mountains to look after Grougal. People have started calling my home 'The Dragon Inn,' and they're coming from all over the world to try to talk to him."

"Poor guy," Adamai muttered.

"And here's the good part," Yugo continued.  "You know how the Zaap portals were made by the Eliatropes?"

"Yeah." She remembered Qilby mentioning it. Not that that made it true, but it did make sense.

"Well, now I can too," he said, grinning with pride.

Amalia blinked. "You did? Really? How'd you learn that?" The Zaap portals, permanent, immovable, and as old as the world itself, were one of the few evidences that the Eliatropes ever existed.  Even as limited as they were, often existing in obscure swamps or wastes, they made travel practical.  Without them, Amalia wasn't sure if she ever would have left home, and she wouldn't even have heard of half the world beyond her kingdom's borders.

"I thought it would be really hard, but it's  _not_ ," he said. "Actually I was planning on building one here."

Amalia considered the possiblities. New sets of Zaaps could change the routes of wandering heroes, trading caravans, everything. "Now this I have to see."

WWW

A large group of Sadidas gathered around one of the other Zaap portals within the borders of the Sadida Kingdom to watch. Adamai handed out orders constructing the basic arch of the portal.

"It has to be this tall and a perfect circle," the dragon said. "You'll want to make it out of wood, right?"

"Of course," Armand said. "Though, doesn't it seem a tad short?"

Adamai looked at him. "I think I know what I'm doing.  The more complicated designs offer more flexibility, but for now, this is how we do it."

"Well, yes, of course, no one is questioning that, but this design is rather small compared to the others."

Adamai looked at the original Zaap, and the one he was making. His Zaap was at least a foot shorter than the other. "Huh. Well, it's too late now."

"Can't you just redesign it?"

Adamai shook his head. "It has to match its partner Zaap. If this one's bigger than its partner, then in the best case scenario it won't work at all."

"And in the worst?"

"You'll end up permanently shorter," Adamai said. "And dead."

"Ah," Armand said. "Carry on then."

"You already built this Zaap's partner?" Amalia asked. "Where?"

"Emelka," Yugo said. "We made the first one in my backyard before we came. I promised Papa Alibert this morning that I'd be home for dinner."

"Wait, you made it from Emelka to Sadida in a day?" Amalia asked, impressed. "When I made the trip with Eva, it took nearly a week."

Yugo grinned. "And it will never take me that long again!"

"Alright, that's good," Adamai said after the arch was finished. "Hey, bro, you want to do the next part?"

Yugo stretched. "Yeah, I got this." He pulled a blue feather out of his pocket. He closed his eyes and the feather began to glow. Yugo scrawled draconic runes into the wooden arch with an ill practiced hand. A few minutes later, he finished. "Hey, Adamai? Do you want to check this for me?"

_"Sooahh Z'apap ime oot tsken Ahklemeh neh tfel eeah tathz paz erthuh uhthz oot eem kate,"_ Adamai read. He looked at Yugo. "That's not how you spell  _uhthz._ Who taught you to write?"

"You did," Yugo said.

"I did?" Adamai frowned. "Well, I did a pretty darn good job. Let me just fix this part...and this part right here, and I should probably rewrite this whole thing here, and...we're good to go."

"Now for the fun part?" Yugo asked hopefully.

"Now for the fun part," Adamai answered grinning.

"Alright, everyone back up," Yugo commanded. "If this works out, I'm told there will be a big flash of light and a small hole in the universe."

" _If_ this works out?" Amalia repeated. "I thought you did this before. And told by whom?"

"Each Zaap comes in pairs," Yugo explained. "I haven't completed the first one until I"ve finished this one."

"And if it doesn't work out?" Amalia demanded.

"Then there may be a lot of dust," he said, and added under his breath, "And some of it will be us."

"What?"

"Ready?"

"What? No, no, call it off!"

"Ready!" Adamai answered.

The brothers stood on opposite sides of the Zaap, their palms out, nearly touching the invisible wall that they would soon form. Yugo's hands glowed blue, Adamai's a deep violet. Electricity sparked between them and reached out to the edges of the arch like a arachne's web. And then...

"Yugo!"

White light burned out of the portal as the fabric of space and time bent to the will of the draconic people. And then...nothing. Yugo found himself on his back twenty feet from where he started. He sat up, dazed. "You alive, bro?"

"I hope so," Adamai groaned. "Because if this is the afterlife I got gypped."

"What were you thinking?" Amalia demanded. "It's bad enough that you try to get yourself killed playing hero all the time trying to save the world, but to nearly die doing something so...so  _Iopish_..."

"Iopish?" Adamai repeated. "What kind of Iops have  _you_ been hanging out with?"

"Is it working?" Yugo asked. A translucent curtain filled the Zaap, as reflective as a pool of water.

"I think so," Adamai said. "This is what was supposed to happen, right?"

"A pulse of energy, a flash of light, the runes have faded, but..." Yugo's eyes flashed blue as he switched to Wakfu vision. The draconic runes reappeared. "It checks out." He reached out to touch the portal with his finger, but King Oakheart stepped forward and put a hand on his shoulder.

"Another thing a king must understand," he said, "Is when to delegate." He picked up his own veggie doll and tossed it through. He closed his eyes and stood silently for a moment. "Yes. I have not been to Emelka in some time and I do not recognize any landmarks, but it seems safe enough. Congratulations, you two."

Amalia stepped up to her father. "Dad, do you think I could spend the night at Alibert's inn?" she asked sweetly. "There are a few things that I wanted to ask…Phaeris about." The king studied her suspiciously. "I was planning on waiting until Eva came back, but if it's just a step away, you know, it's not like I really need a body guard, right?"

King Oakheart sighed. "Very well then."

"Great! Thanks! I'll go get my things." Amalia ran off, and most of the on looking Sadidas began going their separate ways.

"She's not planning on coming back tomorrow, is she, Yugo?" the king asked calmly.

Yugo hesitated. "No," he said. "I'm sorry, but..."

"There's no need to apologize. She has changed after she began travelling, and not at all for the worst. My only concern is that she is short a body guard." He met Yugo's eyes with a piercing stare. "Until Evangelyne returns, I am giving  _you_ that responsibility. Do you accept?"

Yugo nodded solemnly. "I won't let anything happen to her."

The king closed his eyes and smiled wryly. "That would not be feasible nor wise. All I ask is that you bring her back alive."

"I promise." He looked up a moment later as a thought occurred to him. "Hey, does this make me a knight?"

Amalia arrived touting her luggage. "Does what make you a knight?" She had changed out of her princess regalia into something more practical.

"Nothing," the king said. "And no, it doesn't. Be careful." He walked away, and Adamai, Amalia, and Yugo stepped through the portal and into another continent.

A short distance away stood Alibert's inn, the home that Yugo knew so well. "Cool! We're home!"

Adamai sniffed the air. "Not only that, we're in time for supper!"

Yugo and Adamai charged into their home, a large house with a few extra rooms that could be rented to travelers. It wouldn't be the nicest place the princess had ever stayed in, but she had stayed in much, much worse places during her travels, and it had a welcoming atmosphere that she couldn't quite place. Amalia took a backwards glance at the Zaap portal. The translucent sheen that filled it faded, and she was no longer a step away from home. She could toss in a Wakfu crystal to reactivate it, though, and that was all it would take.

"Hey, Amalia," Yugo called. "Are you coming?"

"Coming!" she said quickly.

The sun had long since set, and most of the guests had already gone to bed. The only ones left were a small group of Osamodas who bowed to Adamai respectfully before retiring.  Alibert stood at the entrance to the kitchen, and his face lit up as soon as he saw them.

"Papa Alibert!" Yugo called, jumping into his father's arms.

"Yugo, my boy!" the broad-shouldered innkeeper replied, catching him and tossing him up into the air. "I didn't know you'd be back so soon!"

"After we connected the Zaaps, it was just a step away!" In a nearby cradle, the infant Chibi reached out his arms. Yugo picked him up and tossed him into the air and caught him like Alibert had just done to him. "What about you, Chibi? Did you miss me too?"

The baby made a gurgling noise that sounded like, "Gugubam!"

"Nope," Yugo said sadly, setting him back in his cradle. "You only missed Grougal." He turned to Alibert. "If his first word turns out to be Grougaloragran, he deserves a medal."

The broad shouldered innkeeper smiled and turned to Amalia. "And Princess Amalia! Forgive me if I am unaccustomed to entertaining royalty. I bet you're hungry. Let me make you some supper."

"I'll help too," Yugo offered.  The two of them went into the kitchen.

Adamai sat down at one of the empty tables. "Aren't you going to help him?" Amalia asked.

Adamai snorted indignantly. "I'm a dragon. Cooking is beneath me."

"Yeah?" Yugo called back. "Well, eating your cooking is beneath me too."

Adamai rolled his eyes and threw a nearby eating knife at him. Yugo caught it in a portal and shot it back at him. Adamai caught it expertly by the handle and they both laughed.

"I swear," Amalia said. "If you two survive each other, it will be a miracle." The two brothers laughed again, and Amalia shook her head. "So what's this quest that we're going on? You two were kind of skimpy on the details."

"Well, do you remember the Council of Twelve that gathered to figure out what to do with the, uh,  _issue_ of the Eliatrope nation?" He spoke the last part bitterly.

Amalia nodded. She wasn't present at the meeting; she was helping Yugo find Shinonome's Dofus, but she heard about it.

"It was disappointing," Adamai said. "Half the council thought that we were a mass of starving refugees, coming to beg on their streets and eat all their food, and the other half thought that we were coming to take over the world."

"My dad wasn't like that," Amalia protested.

Adamai shook his head. "No, the Sadida people have been supportive, and the Osamodas always treat me with this weird reverence that I don't get."

"You figure into their religion," Amalia explained. "They believe that all life was created by the three dragons of Osamoda, and all dragons are sacred by extension." She couldn't remember how much time her tutors drilled her with useless facts about other cultures.

"Huh," Adamai said. "I wonder who they were. If it was before Orgonax...Balthazar? That seems like something he would do. And maybe Grougal?"

Yugo stepped out of the kitchen holding a plate in each hand and balancing a third one on his head. "Supper's ready!" Without warning, he threw all three plates at them and they landed neatly on the table. "Alright! Three for three!"

Amalia jumped back in shock and nearly fell out of her chair. "What was that about? You nearly spilled it all over me! If you're going to keep on throwing things all night, I can eat somewhere else."

Yugo jumped through a portal and feel into a chair next to her. "I'll be good," he promised. He looked at both of them. "So, what are we talking about?"

Amalia studied her plate. It was a thick, meaty stew that smelled inviting. "Your quest. Adamai was telling me where we were going."

"Right," Adamai continued. "Anyway, a lot of the leaders of the World of Twelve don't want the Eliatropes to return, and many of them are afraid of us. If the Eliatropes come back and they're surrounded by people who want to kill them, well..."

"It won't come to that," Yugo interrupted. "That's why we're going to go all over the world and convince the people in charge that they don't need to be afraid of us." He held out a spoonful of stew for Az to peck at.

"So, it's diplomacy, right?" Amalia said. She had met most of the rulers that they'd probably end up talking to.

"The first part," Yugo agreed. "We'll have to pick up Ruel, Tristepin, and Evangelyne too if we run into them."

Amalia wasn't sure how she felt about that. Ruel was too cheap for new clothes, decent hygiene, or anything that would make him come close to presentable, and Pinpin wouldn't be able to resist meeting the most powerful people in the world without getting into an Iop-brained brawl. "Is there a third part?"

Yugo nodded. "There are six dofus in the world. A dofus needs the wakfu of both the Eliatrope and the dragon to hatch, and of the six, five are at least partially hatched. There's mine and Adamai's, Grougal and Chibi's, Phaeris's, Balthazar's, and Shinonome's. That leaves Nora's and Efrim's Dofus. I don't know where their Dofus is, but, well, they've been gathered before."

"Yeah, by  _the Ogrest_ ," Amalia said. "What, are you planning on climbing up Mount Zinit and asking him where he'd last seen it?"

"Of course not! Bit if it's been done before, it can be done again." Yugo took a bite of his stew. "Besides, I'm sure the Ogrest isn't as bad as everyone says."

Amalia winced. "All the same, that's something we should save for last." She finished off her stew. It was pretty good. "Do you really think it will work?"

"I hope so. We'll have to bargain with some of them, but just with Zaaps alone, we could make it so you could walk from Bonta to Brakmar in a few minutes! Once people realize how much we can help, of course they'll accept us."

Amalia shook her head. "I know enough about the major leaders to know that they won't appreciate you bringing them closer together. What can shorten the distance for merchants and travelers can spread epidemics, invading armies, spies..."

"Tall fences make good neighbors?" Adamai suggested.

"Right."

Yugo's face fell, but only for a moment. "Then we'll just have to save the world a few more times. We don't need every major group to support us. As long as there aren't enough people opposing us to cause problems, then we'll be fine."

Amalia stood up. "I suppose if we knew how it would turn out, it wouldn't be an adventure, would it? I take it we leave in the morning?"

"Yep."

"Great. Well, good night."

"Good night."

WWW

After they had cleaned up their mess and washed their dishes, Yugo and Adamai went to bed too. "So, are you planning on telling anyone?"

There was only one thing he could be talking about.  Yugo shook his head. "It's not really something anyone needs to know."

Adamai closed his eyes and relaxed into his bed. It was more nest shaped than the sort of things humans slept in. "It's nothing to be ashamed of, you know. Being a king."

Yugo winced. Adamai had a way of asking the questions Yugo would rather have avoided. "I know," he said. "It's just that..."  _Ten thousand pairs of eyes looking to their savior, ten thousand furious angels flying to avenge their fathers and their mothers, an ancient people waiting to be freed._ "I'm not really a king. Not yet anyway."

"So you're going to wait until you have a kingdom?" Adamai surmised. "Alright, but remember, a king is not just a ruler. He's a symbol. Until you step forward, the world will still think that Qilby is our king."

"Yeah," Yugo said before falling asleep. "I know."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In the game, Zaaps can take you to any other Zaap you've ever been to, but it seems like in the show, they're paired. Depending on the subs you use, he may be called Tristepin or Sadlygrove, but I'm going with Tristepin. To translate the draconic language, just speak normal English backwards phonetically, not by spelling. For example, if you say the word, "I" really slowly, it becomes like ah-eh-ee, so backwards it would be eeah. (It takes forever and I keep on talking to myself in the library and mouthing words that don't exist.) However, anything important that happens in draconic, you'll be able to work out by context.


	3. Time Bound

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.”   
> ― Mark Twain

Time Bound

Even in their youth, dragons were a force to be reckoned with.  As an adult, few could stand before Phaeris the Powerful without falling to their knees.  His terrible majesty was unmatched even by his own people.  And yet, when Yugo saw him, he felt no fear, only a sense of brotherhood.  He would never—could never be afraid of dragons.

“Phaeris wishes you good fortune on your quest,” the dragon said.  “How our people return to this world will determine how this world will determine our people.”

“I still wish you could come with us, though,” Yugo said.  They were at the mouth of the cave that Phaeris had chosen to live in.  “But I guess that would be too intimidating.”

The great dragon nodded, an odd gesture from someone with a neck several feet long.  “What I have taught you, and what you have learned from Balthazar, will be enough.”

“I’ll miss you,” Adamai said.  “Having you around, it was almost like living with Grougal again.”  Grougal, who had been chasing Az around mercilessly to learn to hunt, took that moment to crash into Adamai’s head.  “Ow!  I mean, you know, when he wasn’t so small.”  He grabbed Grougal and tossed him over his shoulder with the nonchalance that could only be done safely with infants that could fly and were nearly indestructible.  “I can do the shield spell now, and by the time we get back, it will be impenetrable.”

“I still need to work on my sword,” Yugo said.  When Phaeris had unlocked his powers through the Dragon Blessing, he could make a sword out of Wakfu as strong as Qilby’s scythe.  “Without your help, I can still make a sword, but it’s just the image of a sword and it can’t cut anything.  It’s not really useful unless I want to fake my death.”  He focused and conjured a glowing, blue sword in demonstration and plunged it into his chest, dying theatrically.  Amalia jumped and Adamai laughed, but Phaeris didn’t even blink.  

“Anyway, before we go, there was a question that a few Osamoda pilgrims wanted us to ask you,” Yugo said, getting up.  “Now what was it...”  He fished about in his pockets until he pulled out a scrap of paper.  “Here it is!  Uh, they want to know what happens when an unstoppable force meets and immovable object.”

 

WWW

  
“You know, I think that those Osamodas would have believed anything if we told them it was from Phaeris,” Adamai said afterwards.  
  
Yugo rolled his eyes.  “Come on, Adamai.  We both know that you wouldn’t lie to them like that.  It would defile your honor as a dragon.”  
  
“I don’t know,” Adamai replied.  “When faced with that much reverence, it’s hard not to take advantage of it.”  
  
“Who’s Balthazar?” Amalia asked suddenly.  
  
Yugo looked up.  “Didn’t I tell you about him?  He’s the dragon watching over the Eliatrope children on Emrub.  I met him during my fight with...”  
  
 _Qilby_ , Amalia finished mentally.  Yugo didn’t gloat about battles he won, and he was more solemn about the battle at the Crimson Claws than most.  Amalia remembered seeing him afterwards, his clothes torn to shreds, his body covered in bruises.  He had charged into a warzone while she waited in a fancy ship, and all he said afterwards, was that it was over.  
  
“So, where are we heading first?” Amalia asked, changing the subject.  
  
“Good question.”  Yugo pulled out his map.  “Hey, Grufon!  Where’s the closest major city?”  
  
“Am I addressing my guardian?” the minor ShuShu replied sarcastically.  “Or one of his many friends he’s always lending me out to?”  
  
“I...” Yugo started.  “You’re right, Grufon.  I haven’t been a good guardian.  I should just give up now and make sure you end up in a good home.”  He turned to Adamai.  “Hey, bro, do you think you have what it takes?”  
  
“If you touch me with that thing I will _light it on fire!_ ”  
  
“Okay, okay!” Grufon squealed.  “Including Zaap portals, that would be, uh, the Sadida Kingdom.”  
  
Amalia rolled her eyes.  “Wow, that’s amazing.  Really, do we need a magic evil map for this?  What’s the next one?”  
  
“The next?  Cra.”  
  
“The Cra Kingdom?” Yugo said.  “Cool!  Is that where Evangelyne is from?”  
  
“She was born there,” Amalia said, “but Cra and Sadida are so close, they’re practically the same kingdom.  In fact, there’s probably no reason to go there at all.  If the Sadida Kingdom supports you, then the Cra Kingdom will too.”  
  
“Huh.  Well, we’ll have to stop by on the way back.  Which city is the next closest, Grufon?”  
  
“Sram.”

“Sram?”  Amalia made a face.  “The city of twenty thousand assassins?”  
  
“That sounds dangerous.”  
  
Amalia nodded.  “We should hold off on that one too.”  
  
“The next closest is Brakmar,” the map said.  
  
“Yeah!  We haven’t been to Brakmar in a while.  I wonder if Kriss is still there.”  
  
Adamai scrowled.  “I met their prince.  I can’t say I liked him much.  He had some ridiculous story about you starting a rebellion there.”  
  
Yugo and Amalia looked at each other.  “Rebellion?” Yugo said.  “That seems like of harsh.”  
  
“And besides, it wasn’t Yugo’s fault,” Amalia protested.  “It was that brute Mmmmm...mm...org...whatever his name was.”  
  
“Wait, what happened?” Adamai asked.  
  
“We were playing Boufbowl,” Yugo explained.  “And things got a little out of hand, and then the city got wrecked.  But we _won_.  And we _didn’t_ get executed.”  
  
“Wait, _what_?”  
  
“Boufbowl’s a violent, violent sport,” Amalia explained.  “But you have a point.  Maybe we should stay away from Brakmar until they’re done...rebuilding.”  
  
“So next on the list is...”  
  
“Xelor.”  
  
“Xelor,” Yugo said.  “I feel good about Xelor.  I mean, what can they do that we haven’t faced already?”  
  
“I always thought those guys were creepy,” Amalia said, “but we have to start somewhere.”  
  
“Great,” Yugo said.  “How do we get there?”  
  
The map scowled.  “Take the road north until you reach the Zaap, go east until you get to the next Zaap, then go west, and you’ll be there in four days.”  
  
“Four days?  That’s a piece of cake!  Let’s get going!”  Yugo put the map away and they started off at a brisk walk.    
  
“You know, this is going to be the first time we’ve gone on an adventure with only half our members,” Amalia noted after a few minutes.    
  
“I know,” Yugo said.  “I miss them too.”  
  
“Actually, I kind of like being able to breathe without smelling old person,” Amalia said.  “But we did have good teamwork.  We’ll have to redistribute our duties to cover for them not being here.”  
  
“We can’t do that!” Yugo protested.  “They’re our friends!  They’re irreplaceable!”  
  
“Yes, _they_ are, but what they do isn’t,” Amalia pointed out.  “I mean, Eva has great aim with a bow, but you’re not bad with your Wakfu beams.  I’ll manage the kamas.  I’m the only one who has any, anyway, and Ruel’s so cheap we might as well have been living in a dumpster.  And Adamai, you’re as strong as Pinpin, right?”  
  
Adamai snorted indignantly.  “ _As_ strong?  Tristepin isn’t weak, for a human, but he’s still only human.”  
  
“Great,” Amalia said.  “In that case, you get his job as meat shield.  And you can have Eva’s job of being no fun at all.”  
  
“Hey!”  
  
“You can do this, Adamai!” Yugo said encouragingly.  “I believe in you!”  
  
“What?  But...fine,” Adamai said.  “Let’s just keep going.  We’re making good time.”

WWW

  
A week later, after saving a small town from rampaging prespic ghosts and finding an old lady’s lost bow meow, they arrived in Xelor.  It was rusty and covered in soot.  Most of the buildings were wide, flat semicircles, and the Time Lord’s tower, a square building with a giant clock face, pierced the grey sky at the center of the city.    
  
Yugo had naively expected the city to be full of Xelors calmly defying gravity by floating in the air and teleporting wherever they wanted.  There were some who did that, but most just walked.  The people had every square inch of their skin covered in bandages and mummy wraps, and the Xelor women had loose strips of cloth trailing from their heads to imitate hair.  They also wore metal masks and armor painted in bright colors. 

A few Xelors on the streets stopped and stared at them as they passed.  Xelors covered every inch of themselves and Amalia, by Sadida custom, did the opposite, and Adamai, even in his human form, was short a few fingers and toes.  If anyone thought that Yugo looked odd, he couldn’t tell.  Xelor expressions were hard to read.  
  
They would have time for sightseeing later, though.  They went straight to the giant clock tower where the Time Lord resided.  As soon as they entered, the sounds of ticks and tocks surrounded them.  They approached a desk where a Xelor woman sat.  
  
“I am Princess Amalia Sheran Sharm, princess of Sadida and daughter of King Oakheart Sheran Sharm,” Amalia said formally to the secretary.  “And these are Yugo the Eliatrope and Adamai the dragon.  We’ve come seeking an audience with the Time Lord.”  Adamai turned back into a dragon in demonstration.  
  
“Understood,” the Xelor said calmly.  “There is an available fifteen minute block from four fifteen to four thirty.”  
  
Amalia looked at Yugo.  “What if we need more than fifteen minutes?” she asked.  
  
“Then those fifteen minutes will last _longer,_ ” the secretary said, as though it were obvious.  
  
“Uh, I did say that I was a princess, right?”  
  
The secretary nodded.  
  
“And that doesn’t...no?”  Amalia sighed.  “Oh well.  So, four fifteen?  What time is it now?”  
  
The Xelor gave her a flat look through an already expressionless mask and pointed to a wall that was covered in clocks.  “Oh.”

WWW

  
“On the bright side,” Yugo said after they left, ”we have a chance to see the city.  So who’s hungry?”  
  
They stopped at a local restaurant for lunch.  The food was more solid than what Yugo expected and there was a lot of gravy in everything, but he was more interested in how Xelor’s could eat with their faces covered.  He tried to watch them without seeming rude, but by the time they were done eating, he still had no clue.

“Teleportation?” Adamai suggested.  “If they can teleport, maybe they teleport their food directly into their stomachs.”

“But if they did that, then all their food would be tasteless,” Yugo pointed out.

“That doesn’t exactly contradict the evidence,” Amalia muttered, poking a biscuit with her fork.

They visited a library next.  Half of the books were biographies about dead people, and the other half about the history of the World of Twelve and its various kingdoms.  They didn’t have much time to peruse the collections, so they moved on.    
  
The final stop was a Xelor temple.  It was a large dodecahedron with a large, brass pendulum on each of the twelve sides, swinging in perfect unison so they wouldn’t hit each other.  The trio had to time it perfectly so they could go through the door without being cut in half by one of them.  When they entered, they saw a statue of a Xelor with a raised hammer, poised to strike a sphere on a pedestal.  
  
“That’s weird,” Yugo said softly as they approached the center.  “I thought that they would have something more...timey in the middle.  Why do they have a statue of a Xelor with a hammer?”  
  
“That is not _a_ Xelor,” said a severe voice behind them.  “That is _the_ Xelor.”  It was a man in immaculate white wrappings instead of the standard, worn grey, and he wore a black cloak over them.  His feet didn’t touch the ground.  His glowing eye holes studied them.  “You have come a long way from home.”  
  
Adamai glared at him suspiciously, so Yugo spoke up.  “Yes, we have.  We came here to speak with your king—”  
  
“Time Lord,” Amalia corrected.  
  
“Time Lord,” Yugo said.  “And while we were waiting, we decided to look around.  Are you in charge of this place?”  
  
“Yes.  I am Zdenek, reigning priest templar of the temple of Xelor.”  His voice was still severe, but Yugo was beginning to think that that was just his natural way of talking.  “If you have any questions, you may ask them, but you will not—”  He teleported to the other side of them.  “—touch anything.”  
  
“I have a question,” Yugo said.  “If that is a statue of your god, Xelor, what is he doing?”  
  
“Making time,” Zdenek said.  “In the time before time, Xelor stuck the world with his hammer.  The sound of the strike pleased the god, so he struck it again and again in a steady rhythm.  The space between the hammer strikes was the first measurement of time, and thus, the first clock in the World of Twelve was the world itself.”  
  
“Wow,” Yugo said reverently.  
  
“Oh, come on, Yugo,” Amalia said.  “If that were true, there’d be a giant hammer smashing into the world every second, and no one would be able to live here.”  
  
The priest templar’s eyes narrowed at her.  “It’s true in metaphor,” he insisted.  “The oldest recorded measurement of time is the rising and setting of the sun, is it not?  And if the world did not spin, would the sun rise?  It would take a massive, even divine power, to make the world turn, child of the forest.”  
  
“Child?” she said indignantly.  She shook her head.  “Well, I’ve see all I want to see.  I’ll be waiting outside.  I’ll be sure not to get hit by the giant pendulum on my way out.”  She turned and left.  
  
Yugo smiled apologetically.  “We’ve been traveling a lot.  So, if Xelors can manipulate time, why are there so many clocks?  Wouldn’t the time dilations through them off?”  
  
“Clocks, sandglasses, sundials, those are tools used to measure time,” Zdenek explained.  “It would be unwise to depend on powers one does not understand.”  
  
“Does anything exist outside of time?” Adamai asked.  Yugo looked at him and knew what he meant.   _Emrub, a world where time does not exist._  
  
“Of course,” the Xelor said without hesitation to their surprise.  “All life is at once within time and outside of time.”  
  
“What?”  
  
“There is a powerful spell,” the Xelor explained, “that can stop the ticking of the divine clock.  The caster can move about at will, but everything else is frozen in place.  However, it is possible for those aware of the change to break free of the spell and join the caster in the halted world.”  Yugo had been caught in a spell like that three times, and both he and Adamai had managed to break free once.  “It would not be possible to be aware of anything in that state,” Zdenek continued, “if we were entirely within time.”  
  
“Yes, but that’s just being partially out of time,” Adamai said.  “Could you be entirely outside of time?”  
  
Zdenek hesitated.  “Theoretically,” he admitted.  “But not within the boundaries of reality.  Reality is defined by time and space.  Beyond reality, there could be time outside of space, a dimension that some scholars believe that gods dwell, and there could be, like you say, space outside of time.”  
  
Adamai might have had a head for theoretical physics, but Yugo just felt lost.  Still, it helped that Yugo had been in several of the situations Adenek mentioned.  They had no more questions for the priest templar, so they left, thanking him for his time.

WWW

  
“There are a few things you should know about the Time Lord,” Amalia said returned to the clock tower.  “When you talk to him, you call him ‘your lordship’ instead of ‘your highness’ or ‘majesty.’  The Time Lord has absolute authority like a king, but the title is not hereditary.  I’m not sure how succession works, but there is no such thing as a Xelor prince or princess, so my status as a Sadida princess is about the same as an ambassador, hopefully.”  She glanced at her friends.  “I have no idea what status dragons have, and I don’t think that Eliatropes have any at all.”  
  
“Yeah, it would be so much easier if Yugo were the Eliatrope king now,” Adamai said.  “Then we could talk to this guy on equal terms.”  Yugo glared at him when Amalia wasn’t looking.  
  
“I’ve never met him personally, but I have heard about him a lot,” Amalia continued.  “He’s not vain, so don’t try to flatter him, but he is proud, so do _not_ insult him.  The core virtues of the Xelor are patience and self-control.  Don’t lose your temper or get emotional and be brief.  If you’re not sure about protocol, follow my lead.”  
  
They entered the tower, and for the second time that day, they were surrounded by the sound of clocks.  The secretary motioned them towards the elevator.  “Top floor,” she said.  
  
“Is there anything else?” Yugo asked as they were going upward.  
  
Amalia hesitated.  “I’m not sure if I should tell you this.  It’s probably just a rumor, but...you know how the Xelor don’t have princes?  Well, there’s a story that the current Time Lord was interested in continuing his reign through his son, but because he couldn’t do that by the monarchal method, he consumed his son’s timeline to extend his own life.”  
  
“He what?” Yugo gasped.  “He _ate_ his own son?”  
  
“I’m not sure how it works, and it was just a rumor,” Amalia said.  “You know what?  Just forget it.  I shouldn't have said anything.”

The elevator stopped and opened.  On the far end of the throne room, the Time Lord, sitting in midair, waited for them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm calling the leader of the Xelors the Time Lord just because it sounds cool, and I am in no way, shape, or form making a reference to Doctor Who or the gods that the Days worshiped in The Runelords, although I heartily recommend both.


	4. Violet

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it.”  
> Mark Twain

The throne room had no throne, for the Time Lord needed none.  He sat with his legs crossed, hovering in midair, tendrils of his cloak nearly touching the floor, but not quite.  His cloak was black and hooded, but open down to the waist.  His face and chest were enveloped in shadow, and the holes for his eyes and on his chest were the only light in the room.  The room had a circular design on the floor numbered from one to twelve.    
  
“Your lordship,” Amalia began, kneeling.  Watching her, Yugo did the same, but Adamai didn’t budge.  “I am Princess Amalia Sheran Sharm, and these are...”  
  
“I know who you are,” the Time Lord interrupted.  His voice sounded like rust.  “And of course I recognize the _dragon._  What I don’t know is why you are here.”  
  
“We’re here to know where you stand on the return of the Eliatrope people,” Yugo said.    
  
“Oh?  Will this be determined by a vote?  How democratic.”  
  
Yugo shook his head.  “No, it’s like...”  What was it like?  “An alliance!  The Eliatrope nation is returning, and I want to make sure that we’re surrounded by friends instead of enemies.”  
  
“An alliance?  With a nation that does not exist at this time.  Presumptuous, child.  At what price?”  
  
“None,” Yugo said.  “Of course, we’ll accept any help you can give us, but we’d settle for neutrality.”  
  
“And for how long?” the Time Lord asked.  “Everything withers with time, even...”  He eyed Adamai.  “Even the world of the draconic people.”  
  
Furious, Adamai inhaled deeply and Yugo was worried that he’d start breathing fire.  “You have never met a dragon who has broken his word,” he said instead through gritted teeth.  “No one ever has.”  
  
“I know little of Eliatropes, only that they are close to dragons.”  The Time Lord teleported from twelve o’clock to three on the floor design.  “If I had the choice to invite tens of thousands of dragons into the World of Twelve, I wouldn’t.”  
  
“Is there nothing we can do to change your mind?” Yugo said sadly.  “Despite what anyone says, this _is_ my world, and I wouldn’t do anything to threaten it.  Not even for my own people.”  
  
“Would your people’s return threaten it?  The Eliatropes may be only children now, but when they grow up, could your people conquer this world?”  
  
“They won’t,” Yugo insisted.  
  
“Could they?”  
  
Yugo bit his lip.  “Well, yes,” he admitted.  “But just because you _can_ burn your house down doesn’t mean you will.”  
  
“But with a house as flammable as mine, I would not invite a dragon to share it with me.  Or their kin.  It seems that we have nothing to discuss.”  He teleported to his original position at twelve o’clock.  “Unless you could provide insurance against the power of your people.  But I suppose that the Eliacube isn’t an option.”  
  
“No,” Yugo said firmly.  “Never.”  
  
“Pity.”  He glanced at Amalia.  “It is fortunate that the Sadida are _incorruptibly trustworthy_ enough to guard such an artifact.”  
  
“The Eliacube isn’t in the Sadida Kingdom anymore,” Yugo said.    
  
“Oh?”  He sounded surprised for the first time.  “And where is it?”  
  
Yugo paused, picking his words carefully.  “The Eliacube is outside of time.”  
  
The Time Lord fell silent, so Amalia spoke up.  “We can offer you some of the Xelor Nox’s inventions, though.”  Yugo looked at her in surprise.  “Most of what he had was destroyed when he tried to consume the Tree of Life, but some of it, including the most powerful of his inventions, a mechanical construct called Razortime, requires only a source of power.”  
  
Yugo wasn’t sure if Amalia could promise that, but now was not the time to question.  “But without that source,” the Time Lord said, “it is merely a broken clock.  And yet, the clockmaker interests me.  Desolations that could fill the Ogrest’s shadow, a tinkerer of impossible things, a mocker of reality and gods, he fulfilled all the virtues of the Xelor in all their horror.  And then he was defeated by...”  Both of his glowing eye sockets turned to Yugo and flared.  “By what?  What happened in the clockwork fortress?”  
  
“I...what?”  Yugo didn’t like thinking about the day that ended in ruin and graves, and the incessant, perpetual _ticking_ in the background didn’t help.  “There was a war going on.  Adamai and I found a way into his fortress, and we took it.”  
  
“And you slew a dragon slayer?” he supplied skeptically.  
  
“I...”  Why all the questions?  Didn’t the Time Lord already say that they had nothing left to discuss?  But...they were still talking, so they weren’t done.  “Adamai held him off for a while, and I managed to reach the Eliacube.  I didn’t know how to use it, and I burnt my hands pretty bad, but I managed to...open it up?  I don’t understand a lot of what happened, but suddenly we were somewhere else.  I remember that he was furious about me draining the cube, and then...”    
  
 _Power without measure steaming off of him, faster than the speed of time, strength without limit and rage beyond mercy._  
  
 _“You shouldn’t have killed my friend.”_  
  
“Then he got behind me and I blacked out,” Yugo continued, skipping ahead.  “When I woke up, everything was going in reverse, and that ended before our fight with him even began, and all of his energy was drained.”  
  
“Fascinating,” the Time Lord whispered.  “So he managed to travel back in time.  That shouldn’t be possible.  And he carried you with him?  Then what happened?”  
  
“Nothing.  The fight was over.”  
  
The Time Lord teleported to nine o’clock.  “Yes.  Then what happened?”  
  
How much detail did he want?  Yugo wished that the clocks would stop.  Their ticks melded together like the rattling of dead men’s bones.  “His fortress collapsed, his machines deactivated, and he lost.”  
  
“You misunderstand.  Was Nox the Xelor executed according to Sadida law, or was he killed in battle?”  
  
Yugo’s eyes widened in realization.  “He wasn’t killed.  I...we let him go.”  
  
“I...see,” he said after a moment.  “So after centuries of murder and of massacre, after destroying civilizations and ancient beings, you _let him go._  Have you no sense of _justice_?”  
  
Adamai’s eyes flashed angrily.  “Yugo was just doing what he thought was right!  You--”  
  
The Time Lord silenced the dragon with a swift motion of his hand and motioned Yugo to continue.    
  
“No,” Yugo said finally.  “I guess I don’t.  But if _justice_ means punishing those who hurt people, but leaving the people they hurt to suffer, then I don’t want it!”  Amalia put a hand on his shoulder to calm him down.  It didn’t work.  “You want to know why I let Nox leave?  Because I knew what he was trying to do.  He spent the last _two hundred years_ trying to return to his family, and he _failed!_ ”   _Don’t let me fail._  “I gave him mercy because he just lost his dreams forever, and I couldn’t give him anything else.”  
  
The clocks kept ticking, a furious chorus of time itself.  The Time Lord teleported to six o'clock on the floor design, between them and the exit.  He uncrossed his legs and for the first time since they entered, his feet touched the ground.  “I am finished here.   _Xelor!_  I leave them to you.”  
  
The clocks screamed a cacophony of desperation, trying to get in their last heartbeat before--  
  
And it all went silent.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's hard to maintain youthful enthusiasm while engaging in politics. It would be so much easier to say, "There's nothing you can do to stop us from coming back, so just stay out of our way and you'll be fine." But that would be, you know, wrong. I don't mean to exaggerate Yugo's character, but at least twice he avoided using the Eliacube because he was afraid he'd go mad with power, and when you consider all the things that he faced that he wasn't afraid of (demons, dragons, that giant multiheaded golem to get Grougal's Dofus, Nox), that says something.


	5. Debts

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "But who prays for Satan? Who, in eighteen centuries, has had the common humanity to pray for the one sinner that needed it most?"  
> Mark Twain

Adamai didn't move. Amalia didn't move. Even the Time Lord didn't move. Yugo felt a chill go up his spine. He turned around. At twelve o'clock, floating a few inches above the ground stood Nox.

"You're alive," Yugo stated. "I thought you were dead. Adamai said that he felt your Wakfu leave the world."

"He did," Nox agreed. He didn't seem angry, like he was last time they met, but there was something in his voice that didn't seem to fit. Yugo realized it was sanity.

"But you're not dead." He knew he should be worried, but part of him was still thrown off by how his heart was still beating when everything else had stopped.

"I won a bet."

"Oh. That's good."

"No."

"Oh." Yugo looked at Adamai and Amalia, still unable to move, not even aware that they were frozen. "Are you going to release my friends?" He didn't want to fight Nox, but he never did before either.

"I'd rather this conversation remained private."

"Anything you can say to me you can say to them."

"Because you don't keep secrets from your friends, King Yugo."

Yugo hesitated. Patience. That was the other thing that was different. Before Nox had always been in a frantic rush, ready to strangle Time to death if he couldn't beat it into submission. Now, he seemed like he could wait until the end of... "So what do you what do you want, Nox?"

"To discuss the position of this people on the return of yours."

"So you speak for the Xelor now?"

"I  _am_  the Xelor."

Yugo froze. "You...oh. The Time Lord, he said—he called—and then you..." He called for Xelor, and Nox appeared. Yugo heard Pinpin mention something like that, when his friend Goultard became the new Iop god, but... "But how?"

"Like I said," Nox said, with his alien, godlike calm. "I won a bet. The gods, you see, suffer terminal vanity. It is nearly requisite when men place absolute faith in fallible deities. The previous Xelor has been trying to find a replacement since Ogrest's Chaos."

Ogrest's Chaos. Yugo had heard the stories. People called it the day the gods failed. "And he couldn't go back in time," Yugo supplied. "And you did."

"He never  _tried_ ," Nox spat, anger creeping into his voice. "He had what I sought for two centuries and did nothing but languish."

"So what are you going to do now that you're a god?" Yugo asked. What else could he ask?

"God?" Nox laughed bitterly. "I'm a clockmaker who has accumulated too many debts. A clockmaker should know better than to get behind on his debts. Regardless, we were discussing the end of the Eliatrope's exile."

"Right! I can offer your people additional Zaap portals, ancient Draconic knowledge, and, um..." He glanced at Amalia and Adamai, wishing that they could back him up.

"You are not so petty as to hold a grudge," Nox said. "You'd share your people's bounty with anyone who didn't deserve it."

"Then what do you want?" What can you offer a god?  _What do gods fear most?_

"I want you to remember me."

Yugo looked up at him. "Remember you? Of course I'll remember you. No one will ever be able to forget you." Nearly wiping out entire kingdoms had that effect on people's memories.

"They never knew me. They only knew a nightmare in the Ogrest's shadow. Even Grougaloragran, with all his wisdom, could barely begin to see me. That's why only you can do this, Yugo. I want to be remembered for the monster I was, not for the monster that I wasn't. And in return, I will show Nrutas—" he motioned to the immobile Time Lord— "a vision of what your people have done with the world before the fall of Orgonax and the golden age they created."

Yugo nodded, understanding. In the end, no one wanted to be forgotten any more than they wanted to be alone. "It's a deal," he said. "But before you go, can I ask you something?

"You may."

Yugo glanced over his shoulder at the Time Lord. "I heard a rumor that the Time Lord, you called him Nrutas? Is that his name? I heard a rumor that he sacrificed his son to prolong his life. That's not true, is it?"

"Nrutas and his son, Monortem, had a disagreement, and Monortem left. Nrutas fabricated those rumors to facilitate his son's anonymity. I cannot say that you will meet Monortem in your travels, but if you do, his skills may help you. Is there anything else?"

"Yes, one more thing," Yugo said. "All the things you did, it was to find your family. Now that you've become a god, did you ever..."

For a moment Nox didn't answer, and Yugo began to wish that he didn't ask. "Thank you," Nox said at last. "For not killing Igole. We've been through a lot together. Goodbye, Yugo."

He vanished, and the sound of clocks returned. His friends noticed that he had flickered a few feet away from where he was before time stopped. "What happened?" Amalia demanded. She turned to the Time Lord, who had teleported to his original position at twelve o'clock. "Did you freeze time?"

"Did you receive your answer?" he asked Yugo, ignoring the question.

"Yes."

"Then I can give you no other."

"What?" Adamai asked. "Wait, what happened?"

"It's time to go," Yugo said.

"What? But we're not done here!"

"Yes, we are," Yugo insisted. He bowed to the Time Lord Nrutas. "Thank you for your time."

"But—"

"I'll tell you later."

WWW

"So, the Xelors are going to help us?" Adamai asked after they left. "The part of the negotiations that I saw didn't seem to be leaning that way."

"That's just a diplomatic tactic," Amalia explained. "As long as you don't look too interested, you can try to get a better offer."

Yugo wanted to tell them about Nox, but how would they take it? With blasphemy, probably. Nox had tried to wipe out Amalia's entire people—had succeeded, actually, for less than twenty minutes—and had killed the dragon that had raised Adamai. They wouldn't be too thrilled about Nox becoming the new Xelor god, and as long as Yugo had divine friends, he'd rather not offend them. He'd bring it up later.

"Hey, bro," Adamai said after a while. "Did you really mean what you said back there?"

"About what?"

"Justice," the dragon said. "You said you didn't believe in it. Was that true?"

Yugo looked away. "I don't know, bro. I mean, it seems kind of cold hearted."

"That's because you're confusing it with law. You break the law, you get punished, but if the law is corrupt, then it's not justice. Look, remember how Tristepin died? And he's not anymore, right? And sure, Nox killed Grougal, but now I can watch him grow up just like he watched me grow up."

"Whereas the Soft Oak died," Amalia added. "And he's still dead. The forest may recover, but some of the trees I've known my whole life are gone for good."

"I'm not trying to minimize that," Adamai said earnestly. "But if you don't believe in justice, Yugo, then what else is there? What do you have left?"

"I have you guys," Yugo replied. "My friends have never let me down."

Adamai frowned, then his expression brightened. "I've got it! Yugo, you do what's right most of the time, right?"

"Most of the time?" Amalia repeated. "When has he ever not?"

"Exactly. And you're pretty happy with your life right now, right?"

"Reasonably so, yes," Yugo admitted.

"See?" Adamai asked triumphantly. "That's justice. If you didn't try to be good, you wouldn't be as happy."

Yugo thought about that for a moment, then his face burst into a wide grin. What kind of friends would they be if they didn't try to cheer him up when he was down? They were better friends than he felt he deserved, but there was no reason to press the point.

"So," he said instead, opening up his map. "Two down, ten to go. Where to next?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Because no dissertation on rule and governance would be complete without a thorough discussion of justice and mercy. Nox is one of my favorite characters, and I wanted to include him even if I had to bring him back from the dead and deify him. But seriously, I can't think of anyone who would make a better God of Time than him. I don't know exactly how the Wakfu pantheon works, except for what I learned from Goultard, and he's technically a demigod, so I had to extrapolate a few things.
> 
> Nrutas is Saturn spelled backwards, who is the Roman equivalent of the titan Chronos. Monortem backwards is almost Metronome. I wanted to name one of the Xelors Arcana in reference to the band Nox Arcana, but I guess I'll do that later.


	6. Fool's Gold

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Not all treasure is silver and gold, mate.  
> -Captain Jack Sparrow

The rampaging Rinoplex was causing problems. They usually did when they were upset. The Rinoplex was a creature with four legs, three horns, and a large mouth. It would have been completely ignored if it weren't thirty feet tall.

"We need a plan, and fast," Yugo said.

"I told you, we have a plan," Adamai insisted. "We light it on fire until it stops trying to kill everyone!"

"In this weather?" They were standing in a torrential downpour on the side of the road.

"Fine, we'll  _boil_  it until it stops trying to kill people!"

"Intense heat has never calmed down anyone!" Yugo shouted over the rain. "Besides, the Rinoplex isn't evil, it's just angry."

"And what kind of name is Rinoplex for something like that anyway?" Adamai demanded. "It sounds like someone just sneezed."

"Not everyone sneezes like you do, bro."

"Could you two hurry up?" Amalia asked. She was maintaining the brambles that kept the beast from attacking. "I can't keep this up forever!"

"Okay, I have an idea!" Yugo said. "Adamai, remember that spell you used to seal my eyes shut? Can you use it on him?"

The dragon shook his head. "It doesn't work like that. His eyes have to close on their own, and then I can keep them that way."

"So we'll have to poke him in the eyes, and then you can blind—"

" _EEEAAAIIIHHH!"_

Yugo looked up quickly. "Oh no! It ate Amalia!"

"What?" Adamai demanded turning to where she had been standing. "Dang it! I wasn't looking! Make it do it again!"

"This is serious, Adamai! We have to get her out of there!"

"Alright," he said, swelling to several times his normal size. He became a stone beast, larger even than his Crackler form. "One improvised, unanesthetized surgical operation coming right up!"

"No, Adamai! That could kill him!"

"You're a king, Yugo," Adamai said. "You can't afford to be paralyzed by indecision."

"I'm not paralyzed, I just have a better idea." Yugo jumped in front of the roaring beast. "HEY! BIG GUY! Eat me! I'm delicious!"

The Rinoplex roared. Yugo jumped in his mouth. Adamai watched and shrank back to his normal form. "A better idea," he repeated. "Right. That's exactly what this is."

A blue portal opened up in midair, spilling out Yugo, Amalia, and a small quantity of stomach fluids. Yugo clutched his head and moaned as he was hit with the recoil of transporting a passenger and Amalia fell to her hands and knees and threw up.

The Rinoplex, having experienced the novel sensation of vomiting through an extra-dimensional orifice, stumbled away to go back home and take a nice, long nap.

"That was so much better than my idea," Adamai said brightly. "I don't know why I didn't come up with it myself."

"Horrible," Amalia moaned. "That was just...horrible."

WWW

It was an uphill journey to their next destination. Literally. The Enutrof Kingdom was built in the Etiryp Mountains, and while the mines delved as greedily and as deep as they could, the city stood on the surface. They checked into an inn to get a warm meal and a hot bath before meeting with the king, because it wouldn't do to meet with a monarch smelling like monster vomit.

Yugo pointed out that the rain had already washed them off, and they already smelled better than most of the people on the street. Evidently he was missing something very important.

"So, the Enutrof king," Yugo said afterwards. The rain had softened from a downpour to a light drizzle. "What's he like?"

"No, I don't want one, and besides, I like the rain," Amalia said, fending off an umbrella peddler. "What? Oh, he's an Enutrof, so kamas are serious business. He's a king, so use the same etiquette that you use with my dad, only more so. Think Ruel with a golden crown that he hasn't pawned off yet."

"So do you think we could just buy our way through this?"

"Sadida! They smell like old socks when they're dry and wet socks when they're not." Amalia knelt down and grew a small bouquet of flowers. There was not enough sunlight to make them colorful, but she held them in front of her nose to block out the street smell. "No, we don't have that much money, but we can still make it worth his while. As long as we don't cost him any kamas, he'll remain neutral, and if we can convince him that we'll make him a profit, we'll be able to get him to invest in the Eliatropes' return. Offer him trading privileges and a chance to charge a toll at some new Zaap portals, and he'll be eating out of your hand."

"The Enuntrof king," Adamai mused. "I think I remember him. Was he old and fat with a big phorror?"

Amalia shrugged. "I only saw him once, and that was a long time ago. But that sounds right."

"Yeah, I wasn't too impressed with him."

"That's probably what he wanted you to think," Yugo said. "I've never met him, so I could be wrong, but if he's like Ruel, I bet he goes through loads of trouble to get people to underestimate him."

"How is that like Ruel?" Amalia asked.

"What, you never noticed how he always pretends to get knocked out or hides behind something in the middle of a fight?"

Amalia frowned. "I thought he was just a lazy coward."

"A coward?" Yugo repeated incredulously. "Amalia, he followed us to the end of the world.  _Twice._  If he tries to look like a coward, that's just him being shrewd."

"Shrewd Stroud," Adamai mused.

"You're not going to start rhyming on me again, are you?"

"I promise nothing."

WWW

The palace gate keeper was a burly Enutrof with a grizzled beard and a pair of spades connected by a long chain. "What business do you have here?" he growled.

"We are here to meet with your king," Amalia declared.

"Is he expecting you?"

"No. Is he busy?"

"Yes."

"When will the king not be busy?"

"The king's always busy," the guard said. "And before you ask, no, he doesn't want to buy any cookies."

"Cookies?" she repeated indignantly. "Do I look like the kind of girl who goes around monarchs to sell them cookies?"

"That is the conclusion I came to, yes."

"I am Princess Amalia Sheran Sharm, of the Sadida Kingdom!"

"You are? And are you on Sadida business?"

Amalia hesitated. "Yes."

"Well, not technically," Yugo said.

Amalia glared at him. "You're making it really hard for me to lie, Yugo."

"Wait, Yugo?" the guard interrupted. "You're Yugo? From the Real Boitar?

"The real what?" Adamai asked.

"It's a Boufbowl team," Yugo explained. "And, yes. Once."

The guard's eyes grew wide. "I should have seen it immediately from your hat! Did you really score the winning goal?"

"Technically, but it really should have been—"

"I can't believe I'm meeting you in person! Can I have your autograph?"

Amalia scowled, and Adamai watched the exchange in abject confusion. "Um, sure, I guess," Yugo said.

The guard rummaged through his many, many pockets and pulled out a scrap of paper and something to write with. Yugo signed it, not entirely sure what else to put. The guard beamed like it was his birthday. He led them into the palace, assured them that the king would be with them in a few minutes, and left, looking at the scrap of paper like it was his first born son. "This thing is going to make me  _rich_ ," he said to himself.

When they did meet the king, he was sitting on a golden throne. He had white hair, a round face, and little beady eyes. A large phorror sitting at his feet growled at them. "So you're the famous Brotherhood of the Tofu," he said. He did not sound happy to meet them. He just seemed tired.

"Thank you for taking the time to see us, your Majesty," Amalia said, bowing.

"Yes, well, I doubt you'll feel that way when we're done," the king replied. "I already know why you're here, and the answer's no."

Yugo gaped and looked at Amalia for some sort of loophole, some way to circumvent the abrupt rejection. Adamai growled angrily. "At least hear us out first!" he demanded.

"Exactly!" Yugo added. "I'm sure we can make it worth your while. You have no idea how important this is for us."

"Oh, I understand, alright," the king assured them. "By Enutrof, if our positions were reversed, I'd be doing exactly the same thing. But what I have declared, I have declared, and if I go back on my own decree for you, everyone will want me to go back on my decrees for them."

"And I understand how a monarch must be firm, absolutely," Amalia replied. "But this is an important and complex issue, and we think that there might be some aspects that you haven't considered."

"What's to consider?" the king asked. "I know he's your friend, but that alone does not absolve him of his crimes."

They paused. "Wait," Yugo said. "What are you talking about?"

The king blinked. "What are you talking about?" he replied evasively.

"We're trying to persuade you to support the return of the Eliatropes."

"You are?" The king relaxed a bit. "That's a relief. I thought you were here to get Ruel Stroud out of prison."

The Brotherhood of the Tofu exchanged a shocked glance. "Ruel's in prison?" Yugo asked. "For what?"

"Oh, a number of things," the king said uncomfortably. "Forging legal documents, evading arrest, embezzlement. Anyway, Eliatropes. Are there only Eliatropes in your extradimensional sanctuary, or are there dragons too?"

"There's only one dragon," Adamai said. "But he's really old."

"So Ruel's in prison?" Yugo said. "Can we see him? How long is he going to be stuck there?"

"Not very long," the king said. "Not very long at all. Just until the end of the week."

"Oh," Yugo sighed. "That's a relief."

Amalia frowned. "Is he being executed at the end of the week?"

The king opened his mouth and closed it. "He...might be."

" _What_? I can't believe this!" Yugo cried. "You're going to execute him?"

"Well, if we gave people free food and their own cell for breaking the law, they'd all do it."

"What exactly did he do?" Amalia asked.

The king sighed. "He was a very poor mayor, and became a very wealthy former mayor."

"Ruel was a mayor?" Adamai asked.

"He's done a lot with his life," Yugo explained. "But how does that earn him an execution?"

"He raised taxes until they were no longer sustainable. The citizens of the town he governed were forced to leave until he had the whole place to himself and all the kamas he could squeeze out of them."

"And you kill people for that?" Yugo demanded.

"Well, if you give people free food and a place to stay in exchange for breaking the law, they'd all do it," the king explained.

"But isn't there some other punishment you could give him?" Yugo asked. "Community service or a fine or something?"

At the word  _fine,_  the king's eyes flashed, but a moment later he appeared as nervous and uncomfortable as he was before. "I suppose," he admitted. "There is a loophole for theft. If the accused has caused no violent harm during the crime or the arrest and pays for the requisite legal fees as well as a sum of four times the amount stolen, then he could absolve himself, per se."

"So how much would it be to settle his debt?"

The king frowned and started counting his fingers rapidly while muttering to himself. "Roughly two hundred thousand kamas. No, two hundred thousand, three hundred and nine kamas."

Yugo looked up at Amalia, who had been left in charge of the group's finances. "So, how much does that leave us with?" he asked hopefully.

Amalia grimaced and shook her head. Yugo's heart sank. He thought about Ruel, his father's oldest friend and one of his closest ones, languishing in a cell waiting to die. He also wondered how a prison break would affect negotiations. It didn't look good.

Amalia snapped her fingers suddenly. "We do have that much," she said. "Just not with us. Could your majesty delay the execution until we get back?"

"How much time do you need?"

"We have a heap of kamas on an island in the middle of the sea, so a few weeks? A month, tops."

"Well, I suppose I could allow that."

"Actually," Adamai said, "could you give us a moment, Mr. King? We need to talk about something real fast." He dragged Amalia and Yugo a few feet away.

"Is something wrong, bro?" Yugo asked.

"Yeah. This island of kamas in the middle of the sea...you're talking about Oma, aren't you?" Oma was the name on the island where Grougaloragran lived, where Adamai had grown up. Where Grougaloragran died.

"It's the only thing I could think of," Amalia said. "What's the big deal?"

"That's Grougal's horde!" Adamai said.

"So? He's not using it! Why would he need a mountain full of treasure in the first place?"

"That's not the point. It's  _stealing_."

"Grougal died, remember?"

"But he's not dead anymore."

"Yeah, but think about it," Amalia said. "After he died, who inherited all his stuff? That would be you, right?"

"I'm not sure it works that way with dragons," Yugo said.

"Well, do you have any other ideas?"

Yugo frowned thoughtfully. "Does diplomatic immunity apply?"

"Do you even know what that means?" Amalia asked.

"Sort of. That's why I'm asking you."

"Diplomatic immunity only applies to diplomats," Amalia explained. "Look, we don't even know if the treasure is still there. For all we know, Nox took it, but this will still buy us time."

"What would Nox want with a pile of gold?" Yugo asked.

"I don't know," she said exasperatedly. "Why do crazy people do anything?"

Gold didn't have any life in it, and wasn't really good for anything except trading, so Nox would have left it there. "Are you okay with this, Adamai?" Yugo asked. "I don't know what he would want us to do with his things, but you knew Grougal better than any of us, so it's up to you. But we can't let anything happen to Ruel, and I don't have any other ideas."

Adamai scowled. "Fine. I'll just figure out a way to pay him back later."

They turned back to the Enutrof king. "Thank you for your time, your majesty. We will return within the month." They bowed and left.

The king relaxed in his throne after they were gone. If it all worked out, he would be able to trade an execution he had never wanted in exchange for a small fortune. It was turning out to be a very good day for him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I pretend to be no expert on Wakfu zoology, so I'm going to make up monsters and animals whenever I have too. There probably is a method to the madness, but I haven't found it yet. There is no foreshadowing in this chapter.


	7. Chains

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "I wear the chain I forged in life...I made it link by link, and yard by yard; I girded it on of my own free will, and of my own free will I wore it."  
> -Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

There are four pillars in Boufbowl. First, be stronger than your opponent. They will try to hit you. Hit them harder. Second, be faster than your opponent. They will try to chase you. Run faster. Third, cheat. There is no room for both honor and victory. Fourth, people die.

Lying in a pit with a bucket beside him and a steel grating above him, Ruel awaited the fourth pillar. It wasn't so bad, he decided. He lived a good life. But what would happen to all his kamas? Who would inherit them? Not his grandmother. That was some consolation, but all his savings had been confiscated to "pay his debt to society." What sort of nonsense was that? Society never lent him a kama.

Ruel heard footsteps. At least three sets of feet. After three, the sounds mixed together indistinguishably.  _What day is it?_  It couldn't be his time already, could it?

"Ruel? Ruel, are you down there?"

Ruel knew that voice. He looked up, the joints in his back cracking from disuse. He opened his mouth to speak, but no sound came out. He coughed. "Yugo? What are you doing here?"

Yugo looked down at him from above the pit, gripping the gratings. He was a good kid. Ruel thought about telling him that he had been written into his will, but what was the point? There wasn't anything left to inherit. All the same, Ruel didn't have many friends that were worth more than gold.

"That's a friendly hello," said another voice. It was Amalia, the princess. Was the entire Brotherhood of the Tofu together again? "I don't know how you get into these messes. What would you do if you didn't have us to help you out?"

Ruel stood up in his pit. "Are you here to break me out? I don't think the next guard patrol is due for a few more minutes. We can make it if we hurry."

"I heard that," a third voice rumbled. It was the voice of a guard that Ruel had come to know during his incarceration.

"Oh, hello, Philip. I didn't see you up there."

"Yeah, I was supposed to tell you that you had visitors, but I figured you'd rather hear it from them," the guard replied.

"That was...awfully considerate," Ruel noted awkwardly. "Thank you."

"No problem," Philip said.

"We're not going to break you out," Yugo said. "Even better, we are going to free you. We're going to clear your name, Ruel. It may take us awhile, but your king decided to delay your execution for another month to give us time. We just came by to tell you not to worry."

Ruel smiled. Yugo was just like his dad, and you could feed the genetics to the Ogrest. "Worry?" Ruel asked cheerfully. "I wasn't worried in the least. Well, it's been nice seeing you lot, but I don't want to keep you. Good luck with my name."

Yugo hesitated. "Are you sure you're going to be alright down there?"

Ruel laughed. "I've never been better. I can sleep all day, and the food here is great." Great was a relative term, but knowing that King Aurum was paying for every meal added a lot of flavor.

"Really? Well, okay. We'll just be going now," Yugo said awkwardly.

"Take your time," Ruel called after them as he heard them leaving. "I'll be right here if you need me." He smiled and sat down again. Yugo was a good kid. He'd find a way to...clear...his name.

How  _would_ he clear Ruel's name? It wasn't like there was any question of guilt. Then he realized the only thing Yugo would do, the thing that  _only_  Yugo would do. Yugo was a good Boufbowler, but he didn't know how to cheat. And he didn't know the value of gold.

"Yugo wait!" he called out. The only answer was his own echoes. Yugo was already gone. Ruel fumed in frustration. It would take an obscene number of kamas to clear his name—if they were going to someone else. But if Ruel escaped—if he  _escaped_ —before Yugo got back, then no one would get anything, and no one would lose anything.

But what could he do? He had nothing except for the clothes on his back, the shoes on his feet, and a bucket, literally, full of crap. What could he do in a month?

A slow smile crept across his face. With a whole month, what could he not do?

WWW

Later that day, Yugo and Adamai built the first half of a Zaap portal that would take them back from Oma Island. They weren't sure if they'd need it, but naval voyages had a tendency to accumulate distractions, and a Zaap could cut their travel time in half.

Afterwards, they continued the ancient tradition of the Brotherhood of the Tofu of looking for a ship. The Enutrof kingdom was too far inland for an ocean port, but the Gilt River ran nearby where the merchant ships willing to haggle with Enutrofs came to trade. The three of them walked up and down the docks, trying to find someone willing to grant them passage.

"Hold on," Amalia said. "Does that woman look familiar?" She pointed at a woman with long, white hair and pointed ears.

Yugo looked at her. "I don't  _think_ I've seen her before," he admitted. The woman was in an argument with an Enutrof. She was calm at first, but through the Enutrof's insistence, she grew more and more frustrated.

Amalia frowned. "I know her from somewhere, I just can't..." The woman drew a sabre that hung by her hip and swung it around menacingly. Amalia snapped her fingers. "That's it! Captain!"

"Captain who?" Adamai asked.

The Enutrof remembered another pressing engagement and hurriedly left. "No, just Captain," Amalia said. "She gave us a ride to the Zaap to Sadida while you two were going after Grougal's Dofus. Come on, she can help us." They approached the captain, and Amalia greeted her. "Hey, Captain. Having troubles with the locals?"

The captain sighed dramatically. "Just another scam artist. This place is full of them. That one was trying to charge me 'docking fees.' Ha! They must think I was born yesterday, though honestly, when it comes to gold, some Enutrofs have no shame."

"I'm surprised that you deal with Enutrofs at all," Amalia admitted. "If you're trying to sell your merchandise, the Enutrof Kingdom would be the last place I'd go."

The captain laughed. "The trick, young Sadida, is that the Enutrofs are only stingy when it comes to gold. Do you see those mountains? They hold the largest gold mines in the world, but what happens when they dig up iron or other metals my mistake? Copper is no good to them, and if it's not gold, it's just wasting space, so they sell it. I can get a fairly good deal on semiprecious metals here in exchange for cheap gobball wool that Osamodas would otherwise throw away, and sell the metal off in the Feca Kingdom or even Brakmar if I want to make the trip." The captain gave Amalia a scrutinizing look. "Have I seen you before? I can't place it, but you look familiar."

"You mean you don't remember me?" Amalia knew she shouldn't feel bothered. She had been wearing a fur coat at the time, and Ruel had handled all the negotiations. "You gave me and three of my friends transport to a Zaap portal a while ago."

"Could you be more specific?"

"We got attacked by pirates and fought them off."

The captain frowned and shook her head.

"We paid for passage with a talking map."

"You what?" Yugo asked.

The captains face lit up. "Oh, right, now I remember you. If you travel enough, you can never keep track of anyone, but yes. What was your name again?"

"Amalia," she said. "Amalia Sheran Sharm, and this is my friend Yugo and his brother Adamai."

The captain glanced at Yugo briefly—he had an honest, trustworthy face—but studied Adamai carefully. The dragon was in his humanoid form, but he had bone-white skin, not enough fingers, and hooves. "You're not a mime, are you?"

Adamai gave Yugo his  _this is why I hate dealing with humans_  look and said, "If I were a mime, would I be talking to you?"

"Fair enough," she admitted. "Well, unless there was anything else..."

"Actually, yes," Amalia said. "We need a ride to the Island of Oma."

Her eyes widened. "Not a chance. They say that island is guarded by a giant sea monster that rips apart any ship that sails close."

"Really?" Adamai laughed. "That, uh, 'sea monster' doesn't live there anymore."

"It doesn't? What happened to it?"

Yugo and Amalia answered simultaneously. "It died," Amalia said while Yugo said, "He's living at my dad's house."

The captain looked at them. "Wait, what?"

"He died, and  _then_  he started living at my dad's house," Yugo explained.

"But it  _is_  dead," the captain clarified.

"He died, yes," Yugo said. "And he is no longer guarding Oma."

"You're certain of this?"

"Yes," Yugo said solemnly.

"Well alright," the captain said, satisfied. "Though you should know that I no longer accept maps as payment."

"How about buried treasure?" Amalia offered. "We left a mountain of it last time we were there, and we could offer you a reasonable share."

"You don't mind, do you, Ad?" Yugo asked quickly.

Adamai shook his head. "It hardly matters at this point."

"Buried treasure, you say," the captain mused. "Taken from a cursed island. I know I shouldn't, but how I can refuse?"

They set sail later that day. Every time they set sail before on their adventures, Yugo had looked ahead, but this time he looked back, back at the river port, back at the Enutrof Kingdom, back at the Etiryp Mountains.

Back to where Ruel lay in prison.

_We'll be back soon, Ruel,_  Yugo thought.  _We'll free you._

_Just you wait._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I would like to thank Touristism for writing a surprisingly in depth character study for Ruel, that can be found at www.wakfu.com/en/forum/30-fan-art/66875-ruel-stroud-mighty-miser. Technically there are five pillars of Boufbowl if you count the Audience Surprise, the last one being to be prepared for anything, but when you're in your own personal pit of despair, who wants to get technical? I don't have anything else to say here, so just thanks for reading.


	8. Fear

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it."  
> -Mark Twain

The Gilt River soon emptied into the vast ocean. There was something about seeing nothing but water on all sides, the blue sea fading into the horizon and the sky that always filled Yugo's mind with wonder. Like staring into the stars at night, the ocean was the essence of infinity.

They had been sailing for about a week now on the nameless vessel. An unnamed ship was supposed to be bad luck, but while sailors had a reputation for being superstitious, the captain took the opposite approach. If you accumulate enough bad luck, she explained, it will fall off the edge and come back on the other side as good luck. If the captain had a name, she didn't tell anyone, and if a nameless ship was bad luck, then a nameless captain was even worse. The logic didn't make much sense to Yugo, but considering how little trouble they'd been having on the voyage, the captain was probably on to something.

Yugo took an instant liking to the captain. Her easy going and cheerful disposition belied the professionalism with which she steered her ship and the expertise with which she wielded her sabre. Amalia told him that the ship could even travel over ice like a giant pair of skates, making it able to traverse any kind of water except for steam. Yugo wondered what kind of ship could handle steam travel. Probably one with very big sails.

Adamai had gone swimming and would come back later with lunch. Amalia was sunbathing on the ships railing. She was photosynthesizing, she said, but Yugo knew that if he tried to photosynthesize half as much as she did, he'd photosynthesize his skin into a red, blistering sunburn.

With nothing really worth doing, Yugo decided to learn how to juggle. He ducked into the kitchen and came back with an apple, a biscuit, and a bagel, because three of a kind would just be too easy. He tossed them up experimentally, testing their weight, and threw all of them up in the air. He caught the apple as it came down in a portal, and drew a second to throw it back up. The biscuit and the bagel came down at the same time, so he drew a portal under each of them, switching as they fell upwards.

A few more throws later, the objects began to spread out, forming a triangle with Yugo in the center. Well, that was complicated. He didn't have eyes on the back of his hat, as useful as that might be, and spinning around to keep an eye on everything made him dizzy, but he was starting to get the rhythm down, and he decided to add a fourth object.

He couldn't run back to the kitchen and back without dropping everything, but there had to be something he could use on deck. He noticed Amalia's doll wandering past. "Hey, vegedoll," he said. "I need you to help me with something. When I say, 'jump,' you jump into one of my portals and we'll see how long I can keep four things in the air, okay?"

The doll hissed at him and ran away. From the front of the ship by the steering wheel, the captain laughed. "If it means anything," she said, "I wouldn't jump through one of those things either. It seems horribly disorientating."

"It's really not that bad, after you get used to it," Yugo called back, noticing that the bagel was almost out of momentum.

"I'll take your word on that," the captain said. "But if you need something else to juggle, why don't you use your map? It's about the right size."

Yugo couldn't spare the glance, but Grufon was tied to his belt around his waist. "I can't," Yugo said. "I don't have any hands left." Then he noticed his shoes. "My feet, however, are free." Yugo proceeded to perform a complicated maneuver to get one of his shoes off that included hopping on one foot and spinning around while the rational part of his mind was still wondering why he was juggling in the first place.

Meanwhile, Amalia finished her photosynthesis. She yawned, stretched, and pulled the apple out of midair at the exact moment Yugo tripped.

"So, what are you up to?" Amalia asked, taking a bite out of the apple.

The bagel and the biscuit rolled across the deck. "Nothing anymore," Yugo said, picking them up.

"Well, it looked pretty silly, whatever it was. Do you know how much longer this trip will take?"

"Let's check." Yugo pulled out and unrolled his map. "Hey, Grufon. Are we there yet?"

"For the last time," the lesser Shushu said irritably. "We'll get there when we get there!"

"He says we're close," Yugo translated. "It will be nice to see Oma Island again. I remember when I thought that Oma would be the end of our journey."

"That seems like forever ago," Amalia said. "I mean, Pinpin wore a  _shirt_  back then."

Yugo laughed, remembering how he met the Iop knight, crashing into his dad's inn looking for carnage, how Yugo managed to free him from Rubilax, how they found Amalia and Evangeline in the woods being attacked by polters.

"Hey, Amalia? Can I ask you something?"

"Sure."

"Why did you decide to join us?"

Amalia gave him an astonished look. "What kind of question is that? We're friends, aren't we? Do you think that I'd let you meet with all the leaders of the world on your own?"

"No, not this time," Yugo explained. "The first time. Back before we knew each other. Ruel came because he's best friends with my dad, Pinpin came because he had some knightly honor debt, and Evangeline came to look after you, but I don't know why you came."

For a moment she didn't answer. She just stared outward across the infinite sea, and Yugo realized that, like him, she didn't have an answer. "Why do you think I came?" she asked finally.

_Why?_  "Because you wanted to."

Amalia smiled. "And you're probably right. But while we're asking deep, prying questions, I have one for you."

"Okay."

"What," she said, "what, what,  _what_  do you keep under your hat?"

Yugo's eyes widened and he felt his face grow hot. "Amalia, you can't just  _ask_  someone something like that!"

"Well, why not? We've traveled over the entire world together, and I have never seen you take your hat off. What, are you secretly bald? Do you have horns? You can trust me, I won't tell anyone."

"Hey, do I ask you to take off your clothes?" Yugo asked indignantly. He knew she was just teasing, mostly, but still...

"Yes, once," Amalia pointed out.

Adamai, returning from his swim, flew past them with a fish in his hands. "I'm sure that made a lot more sense in context."

"Adamai!" Amalia yelped. "It wasn't what it sounded like."

"That's what I said." He started roasting his fish slowly with his own breath.

"It's a long story," Amalia said.

"We were in prison," Yugo explained.

"Oh, prison," the dragon said. "In that case it's no big deal."

"Anyway," Yugo said, changing the subject. "We're almost to Oma. You looking forward to it? You did grow up there."

Adamai shrugged and took a bite out of his fish, trying to look nonchalant. "This isn't poisonous, is it? Oh well. Honestly, I'm not even sure the island's still there. Grougaloragran wouldn't have gone down without a fight, and he could have scattered Oma to the four corners of the world if he wanted to, and even if he didn't, it'd hardly be recognizable."

"Well, that's an awfully optimistic attitude," Yugo said. There was definitely something bothering him, he decided. Adamai was only that flippant when he was nervous.

"Really?" Adamai asked, finishing off his fish. "It must be my nostalgia talking."

"Assuming that the island's still there," Yugo said, "how many people do you think could live on it? See, I was thinking, for our people to return, they'll need a place to stay, so maybe we could make Oma an Eliatrope colony or something."

Adamai frowned thoughtfully. "If you stuffed everyone in crowded, several story buildings, the island could hold, I don't know, five hundred, a thousand people? But they'll need to eat, too, and Sadida farming techniques aside, foraging wouldn't support that much more than fifty people. Fishing could add to that, but you'd have to calculate seasonal ocean currents because I won't."

"But we could import our food from somewhere else."

"In exchange for what?"

Yugo hesitated. "You know, there is a lot about economics that I don't understand."

"The invisible hand is a tricky little guy," Adamai agreed.

"Anyway, fifty people is a good start," Yugo said. "I'm sure we can work out the rest."

A few minutes later the captain called out. "Land ho!"

"What, we're there already?" Yugo gasped. "Grufon, why didn't you say anything?"

"You didn't ask," the map responded.

Yugo laughed, glad that he could rely on his Shushu, at least, to be unreliable. "And we didn't even wreck the boat this time."

"Don't jinx it," Amalia cautioned. "We still have a few miles left."

"Hey, Ad. Was it like this when we left?"

Adamai squinted off into the horizon at the speck that marked the island. "I remember there being another mountain right there. Man, they really wrecked the place."

Yugo tried to make out some of the island's details from the distance. He couldn't distinguish any of its mountains, let alone see if any were missing. "I think you're making that up. Not even Eva could see that much this far away."

"I'm not Eva," Adamai replied.

"That's exactly my..." Yugo's voice trailed off as the boat began to shake. And when it shook, it shook like an earthquake. It rocked to the side so hard, it would have thrown Yugo overboard if he hadn't caught himself in one of his portals.

"I told you, Yugo!" Amalia shouted, clinging to the ships mast. "I told you not to jinx it!"

The captain grabbed onto the railing and peered over the edge. "Ogrest's Chaos!" she shouted. "It's a sea monster! You said the sea monster was gone!"

"It  _was_ gone!" Amalia screamed. "I didn't know there were any others!"

The ship slowly rose into the air. "There aren't any other sea monsters," Adamai said, levitating to avoid the tremors. "Grougal ate them centuries ago."

"Maybe another moved in," Yugo suggested. Even sea monsters needed to live somewhere, right? Yugo zaapped to the crow's nest where he would be able to stand without being knocked off his feet. From the vantage point, he could see what was attacking them. "Everybody, calm down! We're okay, they're friends."

"Friends?" the captain repeated. "How many sea monsters do you know?"

"They're not sea monsters," Yugo said. The sea calmed and the ship stopped shaking. "They're Sufokians."

A massive New Sufokian vessel emerged from the water beneath them. The Sufokians had approached them the first time the same way, back at the Crimson Claws Archipelago. It was, admittedly, a very impressive way to greet someone.

Two large doors on the top of the vessel opened up and a handful of soldiers armed with Stasis rifles spilled out. They wore dark blue uniforms with their faces covered by brass helmets, and one of them with the most knots on his shoulder addressed the ship.

"You are entering New Sufokian waters," he said. "Please state your name and reason for coming here, and we'll be forced to open fire." One of the other soldiers whispered something to him. "Sorry,  _or_  we'll be forced to open fire."

"Hold on," Adamai said indignantly. "Since when are these Sufokian waters? These were my waters a few years ago."

"Holy fishpaste!" the head soldier gasped. "It's a dragon!"

"I dragon?" Adamai said in mock surprise. "Where?"

"Retreat!" the soldier ordered. "Tell the Lieutenant Corporal to open fire!"

Yugo zapped between them and their ship's entrance. "It's okay, we're friends!" he insisted. "We met your prince a few months ago and—"

The panicked soldier raised his rifle and pointed it at Yugo. "You are going to get out of our way, or so help me I will—"

Adamai, in the massive stone form of a Crackler, backhanded the soldier and sent him screaming into the ocean. The rest of the Sufokians raised their rifles at him. "Do not attempt to fire at my friends," Adamai ordered. "Or Amalia. You may, however, shoot them at me if you're feeling lucky."

The soldiers hesitated and lowered their weapons. "Hey, Adamai," Yugo said, peering over the edge to see where the first soldier was treading water. "Give me a hand, will you?" He grabbed onto Adamai for support and opened up a portal to fish the soldier out of the sea. "Sorry about that," he said. "We didn't mean to start a fight with anyone. What do you people have against dragons, anyway?"

"They're dangerous!" the first soldier explained emphatically. "One of those monsters destroyed half of an entire fleet at the Crimson Claws."

Amalia had gotten off the ship with the captain to join her friends. "That wasn't the dragon," she said. "Rushu did most of the damage."

"Who?"

"Rushu? You know, king of the Shushus, dark god of carnage and destruction?"

One of the Sufokians actually started laughing. "He's just a myth."

"If it makes you feel any better," Adamai said dryly, "so are dragons."

"There's actual empirical evidence to support the existence of dragons," another soldier said. "Characters like this 'Rushu' only appear in bedtime stories."

Amalia, Yugo, and Adamai exchanged a concerned look. "What are you doing on Oma anyway?" Amalia asked.

"You're the ones trespassing on our waters," the soldier reminded them. "We are not obligated to answer your questions."

"Yes you are," Adamai growled, towering over them.

"Oh, right," the soldier remembered suddenly. "We're colonizing it."

"You are?" Yugo asked. "Dang it!  _We_ were going to colonize it."

"Who's in charge of this expedition?" Amalia demanded. "We need to speak with him."

"Prince Adale leads us," the soldier said. "But he doesn't speak with just anyone."

"I am  _not_  just  _anyone_ ," Amalia snapped. "I am Princess Amalia Sheran Sharm of the Sadida people. He  _will_  speak with me."

WWW

They found Prince Adale sitting on the beach on a comfy chair under an awning with a cup of tea. He stood up when he saw them approach.

"Princess Amalia," he said. "How good it is to see you, once again, traveling in what looks to be a mockery of a pirate ship."

"Pirate?" the captain said indignantly. "Oh, you scurvy sea dog."

Some of the Sufokians fingered their weapons, but the prince seemed unperturbed and sat down. "It is a pleasure to see you as well, Prince Adale of the New Sufokian Empire," Amalia said formally. "I was not expecting to see you again, here least of all. What brings you to the Island of Oma?"

The prince smiled as he sipped his tea. "It can't be merely a coincidence that we keep on meeting in these obscure corners of the world, but that is a matter for another day. New Sufokia is expanding from its center at the bottom of the ocean, Princess of the Forests, and we have claimed whatever uninhabited islands we could establish ourselves."

"And you needed an entire fleet for that?" Yugo asked. There weren't nearly as many ships as there were at the Crimson Claws, but there were still far more than necessary to deal with the few mosquitoes that threatened them.

"I am the crowned prince of New Sufokia," Adale reminded him. "I am entitled to a small honor guard. There were also rumors of some horrible monster guarding this island, but they seem to be mostly exaggerations."

Adamai scowled, but did not speak. "We spoke to some of your men," Yugo continued. "They seemed to blame Phaeris for all the damage that was done at the Crimson Claws, and they didn't believe in Rushu at all."

"I may have exaggerated the dragon's role in events," the prince admitted. "It was a token of my respect for the creature, nothing more. Besides, I couldn't include some mythological bogeyman in my official report, now could I? Who would take me seriously if I attributed the loss of half the fleet to divine intervention?"

"But that's really what happened," Yugo protested.

The prince shrugged. "If my father's officers wanted the truth, they'd accept it without bias. Regardless, I know you haven't come here to reminisce over old times. What really brings you to my small island?"

"Before it was your island, it was my home," Adamai growled. "And that sea monster you mentioned? He raised me from the day I hatched until the day he died. We've come to pick up a few things that he left behind."

"I see," Adale said, a glint in his eye. "And those few things wouldn't include the pile of gold that was stored under the mountain?"

"It would, actually," Yugo said.

"The treasure, as well as the rest of the island's bounty, has been claimed by New Sufokia, and I've already had the treasure shipped back to the capital."

"No!"

"Yes, unfortunately. If you had arrived a few weeks ago, you could have helped yourselves, but now..."

"And what about the Eliatrope temple that was down there?" Adamai demanded. "What did you do with that?"

"That was a temple?" the prince asked, bemused. "I noticed a few crude paintings on the walls, but they didn't match my furniture. We've done some...remodeling."

"You did  _what_?  _Why_?"

"We're not archaeologists," the prince explained offhandedly. "We cannot afford to care about the culture of forgotten peoples when our own is struggling, and frankly, little dragon, I'd rather let the past stay buried then let history hinder the future."

Adamai screamed in rage and threw himself at the Sufokian prince. The nearby soldiers raised their weapons in panic, but Yugo acted first. He caught Adamai in a portal and the dragon crashed into him instead. Adamai nearly blasted a hole through Yugo's chest before realizing what had happened.

"It's his  _grave_ ," Adamai hissed. "This place is Grougaloragran's  _grave_ , Yugo! And they're defiling it!"

"I know, Adamai, I know. But it's okay, we can—"

"No! It's not okay." Adamai stood up and turned to face the prince. Several soldiers and Steamflexes pointed their weapons at him, but he ignored them. "You are a fool, Adale, and if all Shukrute hadn't broken loose when you attacked Phaeris, you'd be a dead fool. You're insatiable greed will doom you. By my word as a dragon, little human, that will be the  _history_  of your people."

Adale looked at Adamai in contempt. "Your pet monster is waxing offensive," he said. "I suggest you leave."

"We were just leaving," Yugo said. He turned to his friends. "Come on. We should..."

"Yeah," Amalia agreed.

Adamai gave the prince a parting glare and flew back to the ship. Yugo stopped and looked over his shoulder at the man. He wished there was something he could say to make it all better, but how do you excuse blunt honesty? So he said nothing, and hoped that the prince would be able to excuse a few angry words.

As their ship sailed away, the island began to shrink into the distance. They weren't sure where they were headed, but whatever their destination was, Oma wasn't it. If the captain felt cheated about missing out on her share of the treasure, she didn't mention anything.

"Do you even know what diplomacy means?" Amalia asked, arguing with Adamai. "I'll give you a hint. It involves not threatening the nation of the person you're talking to."

"Leave me alone," Adamai growled sullenly. "They wouldn't have been our friends no matter what we said. We were brought together by nothing more than a common enemy that they have already forgotten."

"Yes, but we still could have..."

"We could have what, Amalia? Gotten on our hands and knees and begged him for a few thousand kamas? Even if that would work, can you honestly tell me that you would have groveled?"

She hesitated. "Well, maybe not  _groveled_ , but..."

"Exactly. I wouldn't have either. The only person in this group who would have is Yugo, and he's that last person here who should have to."

"Could we stop arguing already?" Yugo asked. "If there's one thing we can agree on, it's that we have more important things to worry about."

"No, I think this is something that we need to clear up," Amalia said.

"Is it more important than Ruel?" Yugo asked. Amalia stopped, and even Adamai looked down guiltily. "How are we going to rescue him now?"

WWW

Back on the beach, Prince Adale watched the crude sailboat depart. He sipped his tea, but it had already gone cold.

"Those were threats," General Mofette said. She was Adale's right hand officer and unequalled on the battlefield, even if she was a tad over enthusiastic. "And worse, insults. Can you really just let that pass?"

"They are but barbarians, ruled by superstitious nonsense," Adale replied. "It is not my responsibility to civilize them."

"But they should at least learn to fear you, if not respect you," she insisted. Her eyes were eager, hungry even. She had come to Oma expecting to do battle with a sea monster that had never shown up.

Adale saw that pale little lizard in his mind, snarling at him. "Oh, alright," he conceded. "Fire a warning shot, to send them on their way."

WWW

"When it all comes down to it," Amalia said as they continued to sail away, "I don't see any way you can have both. We don't have the kamas to buy Ruel's freedom, and if we break him out of prison, the king will see us as criminals. At the very least he'll refuse to negotiate with us, and he might even tell my dad."

"What if we made it look like someone else set him free?" Adamai suggested.

"Hey, that's a good idea," Yugo said, lighting up. "If the king thinks that one of Ruel's other friends broke him out, we can still negotiate with him about everything else."

"But who else would want to break  _Ruel_ out of prison?" Amalia asked. "He doesn't really have any friends besides us." Then she winced. "I just made him sound unbelievably pitiful, didn't I? I need to stop doing that when I'm trying to rationalize leaving him to die."

"Ruel has lots of friends," Yugo protested. "My dad, his Real Boitar buddies, that other Enutrof from that inn who knew him from his days in a rock band..."

"I don't think that guy was his friend," Amalia pointed out. "They seemed to hate each other."

"Oh, I'm sure they cared about each other, um, deep, deep, deep..." Yugo's voice trailed off as he saw the light from a violet star in the noonday sky. "What's that?"

"Oh no," Adamai gasped. "Abandon ship!"

"What?" the captain said. "Over my dead—"

It was a Stasis blast, a  _New Sufokian_  Stasis blast, as wide as the ship they sailed on and powerful enough to knock Phaeris out of the sky. Acting instinctively, Yugo drew a portal as wide as he could and swallowed the refined destruction whole. He opened up a second portal and fired it back in the direction that it came.

WWW

"The main Stazer?" Adale observed. "There seems to be a great deal you do not understand about the concept of 'warning shots.'"

"If they survive," Mofette replied, "they'll be warned."

"And if they don't, you'll have just disintegrated the daughter of one of the twelve most powerful..." His voice trailed off as he saw a light in the sky. "I say, are they returning fire?"

WWW

"Bull's eye!" Adamai cheered. "Right in the flagship!"

Yugo's face paled as he realized what had happened. "Oh no," he said. "I shouldn't have done that."

"Yeah, well, they shouldn't have fired at us."

The captain peered out through her telescope. "Well, now. That does  _not_  look promising."

"Is something wrong, Captain?" Amalia asked.

"Possibly," the captain admitted. "I mean, I don't want to sound pessimistic, but they certainly have a lot of ships that can move remarkably fast without sails. They also seem to be coming towards us."

"It was his ship," Amalia realized. "He  _really_  likes his ship."

The closest of the Sufokian ships started firing. It missed, throwing up huge fountains of water as Stasis blasts exploded into the sea around them.

"How fast can this ship go?" Yugo asked urgently.

"She can move like the wind," the captain replied.

"Good."

"It's a calm day."

"Oh."

"You just had to tick him off, didn't you?" Amalia accused. "You just had to go and insult the guy with the unstoppable navy."

"I think we can agree that we both said a lot of things that he's going to regret," Adamai said. "But right now—" He raised his hands and blocked what would have been a direct hit with a force field. He then fell to his knees in shock and gasped.

"Are you okay, bro?" Yugo asked.

"Phaeris makes it look so easy," he muttered. "I'm fine, but I won't be able to take many more direct hits."

"I'll deflect whatever I can," Yugo decided. "You block anything that get's through."

"And how long do you think we can keep that up?" More ships came into range.

"Do you have a better idea?"

"No, do you?"

Yugo looked off towards Oma Island, where the Sufokian prince hopefully still sat on the shore, sipping his tea. "Yes."

"Oh," Adamai whispered, catching on. "Be fast. I'll hold them off for as long as I can."

"You're planning something recklessly dangerous, aren't you?" Amalia demanded.

Compared to the certain death they were facing already? Well, maybe, but a chance was still a chance. "I'll catch up with you at Moon Island."

"Don't you dare, Yugo! You've run off like this before."

"And I came back!" Yugo insisted. He didn't have time for long goodbyes. He didn't have any time at all. "Be safe. I'm sorry."

He jumped off the ship and into a portal. The rain came down. And Yugo flew, a ribbon of blue light against the storm.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wasn't expecting the chapter to be this long, but oh well. There wasn't really a good place to stop earlier. I don't always end my chapters with cliffhangers, but when I do, I disappear off the map for no reason and forget to update. As soon as I saw the quote, I thought of Wakfu. I don't know if Yugo was in his Dofus for billions of years, but he was stuck in there for a while.


	9. Shame

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Whatever is begun in anger, ends in shame."  
> -Benjamin Franklin

Yugo flew like lightning, faster than a thought, faster than time. Stasis blasts filled the air, but they had no more chance of hitting him than an army of Cras aiming at a mosquito. His friends, though, they were the ones at risk. With one lucky shot, they could disappear, their presence ripped from his mind like his heart from his chest. He wouldn't let that happen. He would  _not_  let that happen!

He'd have to make Adale stop. He couldn't just ask him, he'd have to terrify him. The whole reason they were on this quest was because the World of Twelve was afraid of what his people could do. Well, maybe they should be afraid.

Prince Adale still sat on the beach, mildly annoyed at the inconvenience of the ordeal. How dare he? How  _dare_  he sit in comfort, sipping his tea while people died?  _They're not dead yet,_  Yugo reminded himself.  _Not yet, not ever!_

The guards didn't have time to react, the prince barely had time to notice before Yugo bowled into him, hurtling both of them into the sand. "Call them off!" he shouted, grabbing the man by the collar.

The prince blinked, disorientated, focusing on Yugo on top of him, realizing who he was. "Stand down," he ordered his men. "You're likely to kill both of us if you fire." His guards lowered their weapons. Yugo barely noticed them.

"Not them,  _them_!" he said, pointing at the ships. "Tell them to stop firing at my friends before they kill someone!"

"And I suppose you'll kill me if I don't?" the prince sneered. "I don't know if you've thought this far ahead, boy, but if you kill me, there won't be enough  _dust_  left of you to make a man sneeze."

Yugo screamed and blasted a nearby Steamflex with a Wakfu beam. Wakfu wasn't as destructive as Stasis, but he could carve through stone when he wanted to. "Listen to me, Prince Adale. I will know the exact instant when my friends die, the  _exact instant_!" He still remembered that moment in Nox's clock when he felt Pinpin die. He wouldn't let that happen again. "But I  _don't_  know what I'll do next. You can end this right now. No one has to die, Adale.  _Call—them—off._ "

 

WWW

Death rained. The essence of death, destruction, chaos, and entropy filled the sky. The captain steered the ship and Adamai maintained a shield to block the Stasis blasts. Amalia watched, feeling useless. Afraid, too, that they could all die at any moment, but mostly useless.

A blast crashed into Adamai's shield, but instead of stopping, the forcefield shattered and the beam tore through the ship's hull. Adamai screamed and collapsed on the deck. He didn't move.

"Captain!" Amalia called. "We're hit! We're taking water!"

"I'm busy!" the captain called back from the steering wheel. "Fix it!"

She ran over to Admai. "Wake up!" she said. "I know we never really got along, but the captain really needs your help right now." The dragon groaned, but his eyes didn't open. Amalia looked down through the hole. It was only a few feet wide, but water poured through fast. If she could find a way to plug it...but she didn't have many plants that could handle saltwater. But she did have...

She grabbed her doll and jumped overboard. The flow of the water dragged her through the hole, and when it was half way through, she had her doll inflate, clogging it. The doll flailed its oversized limbs, but the water stopped pouring in. Amalia sputtered for breath, reached out, and found the second thing she was looking for.

Seaweed.

 

WWW

Children have no capacity for violence. That was what Prince Adale's father, the king of New Sufokia, always said. They are free to rant with anger because there's nothing they can do with it. An adult can nurture his anger with cunning and patience, but the anger of a child is as vast and insubstantial as a cloud.

But looking up at the angry child standing over him, he remembered that clouds are full of lightning.

And lightning only needs to strike once.

"Give the order," Adale said. "Cease fire."

 

WWW

Adamai woke up with the sort of headache you get after giving yourself brain surgery with a sledgehammer. The sky was clear. That was important. He couldn't remember why, but it was good. He yelped when he saw that the entire boat was covered in seaweed.

"Yikes! How long have I been asleep?"

"Huh, you're up," Amalia noted. "All good things come to an end, I suppose."

Adamai ignored her. The throbbing in his head was way more irritating than she was. "We escaped," he realized. "What happened?"

"Oh, you took a nap in the middle of the fight, and I ended up having to repair the ship," Amalia said offhandedly.

"If I hadn't lasted for as long as I did, there wouldn't be enough ship to repair. But I'm glad you finally found your calling as a carpenter."

"You were both admirable," the captain intervened. "If it weren't for you two, my ship would be at the bottom of the ocean. You have my gratitude."

Adamai snorted at the compliment. "Yugo's the one who saved us. All we did was buy him time."

 

WWW

"You got what you wanted," Adale said stiffly. "Now, kindly get off my island." He stood up slowly. Yugo didn't stop him. Standing up seemed like a terrible reason to kill someone.

Yugo realized that he was out of his depth. He never thought that he'd end up in a hostage situation, and definitely not on the aggressor's side. "Not yet," he said. "If I leave, you might send your ships back after them. I have to give my friends time for you to lose track of them."

The prince rolled his eyes, annoyed at the inconvenience. "Give us some space," he ordered his men. "You're making the boy nervous and twitchy." The soldiers backed away, and Adale turned back to Yugo. "You may stay if you must, but I have work to do. I hope you don't mind if I sit down."

What would a real hostage taker do in this situation? "Um, okay, I guess."

The prince ordered a new cape that wasn't dirty and called for a series of reports to look through, and a cup of tea. "I'd offer you a cup as well," Adale said, "but I imagine you'd decline." Yugo didn't respond. "You know, while I was in that temple of yours, I noticed a painting depicting dragons with a tribe of humans wearing long, colorful hats."

"Those were Eliatropes," Yugo explained. "I told you, dragons are part of my people. The dragon that I'm traveling with, he's my brother."

"Indeed? I'll contemplate the biological mechanics of that another day. Ever since our first meeting I knew you'd be fascinating. Do you remember what you said to me back then?"

"Uh, something about not shooting at Phaeris?" he guessed.

"'I mean you no harm,'" Adale said. He laughed. "I had you surrounded and outnumbered with weapons that you could not possibly have comprehended, and your first words were, 'I mean you no harm.' Most would have apologized and promised to leave, and a bold few would have tried to bluff their way through with empty threats, but you? You tried to  _reassure_ me."

"So?" Yugo asked, not getting the joke. "What's your point?"

Adale sipped his tea leisurely. Out of all of them, his position was the most precarious, but if that bothered him, he didn't show it. "There is no point, only observation. Although I might speculate that your arrogance will take you to your grave very soon if you're not careful."

" _My_  arrogance?" Yugo repeated. "I'm not the one who went out of his way to attack Phaeris."

"I was prepared for any possibility," Adale replied. "I believe I have proven as much. And if the dragon proved too powerful, I could have retreated, assuming the beast couldn't swim."

"And if he could?"

He shrugged. "It was a slight, though necessary risk." His expression darkened. "That island was necessary to my people beyond question. For too long have my people been trapped at the bottom of the sea. For too long have we lived beyond the touch of sunlight where a single engineering error could drive us to extinction. For too long have we been cut off _from the world that is our home_." He relaxed suddenly and smiled. "But that's not something I expect you to understand."

Yugo opened his mouth to speak, but no sound came out. He understood, far more than he wanted to. He wasn't a boy talking to a prince, he was in a meeting between the champions of two nations. And knowing what drove the man, did he really want to fight him? Could he? "We don't have to be enemies," he said finally.

Adale set down his cup and laughed mirthlessly, shaking his head. "Yes, Yugo, we do."

"What? Why? If this is about what happened to your ship—"

"This isn't about what you've done, it's about what you are, and what I am." The setting sun cast long shadows across his face and the air grew chill. "There are dragons older than mankind, and they still think this world is theirs. They lurk in their caves and on obscure islands, hoarding treasure like an Enutrof and care nothing for the human race beyond the rare virgin sacrifice."

"But no matter what power they accumulate in their lives, it dies with them," he continued. "The power of my people lasts forever. What one Sufokian scientist discovers, a thousand scholars can learn. We innovate, we improve, we bury history under the mountain of progress."

"The dragons, your people, are of the past."

"We are the future."

 

WWW

The captain steered the ship into the shore of Moon Island. It was a miracle that the ship didn't sink or fall apart entirely. They didn't talk much during their trip back. Amalia spent the whole time looking back at Oma Island, where Yugo had surrounded himself with an entire hostile army. Adamai assured her that Yugo was fine, but he kept on looking back all the same as well.

"They don't seem to be following us," the captain noted. "But I'd like to get my ship patched up and away from here as soon as possible."

"I'll get help," Amalia offered. "We have friends on this island."

"I remember you calling the Sufokians your friends," the captain said.

"Our friends here are nothing like those guys," Amalia said. "They're a tribe of Sadida Kannibals who worship a monkey with a magic hammer."

The captain shook her head. "I don't know how you find these people."

"Well, while you're all working on that," Adamai said, "I'm going to go check on Yugo."

"If anything happened to him..." It was Adamai's fault they got in trouble with the Sufokians in the first place.

Adamai snorted. "He's my brother, remember? He's not going to die just because you turn your back on him for five minutes." He jumped off the ship and flew away.

Amalia turned to the captain, who was inspecting the ship. "If I'm not back in half an hour, then I probably got caught up in a spontaneous Sadida monkey party. Don't come looking for me."

As much as she wished she were serious, she doubted she could enjoy herself if her life depended on it. Yugo went and did it again. He left her behind. He'd be back, of course. He might come back half dead and barely able to walk, but he'd come back. And next time they were caught in an impossible situation, he'd be all like, "Hey look! Mortal peril! Last one there's a grouchy gobball!" and he'd race off faster than anyone could keep up with him. And one day he wouldn't come back. And she'd be left behind for good.

A tower shone in the moonlight as it reached up toward the stars. It marked the Kannibal village that she was headed to. It wasn't Yugo's fault that she couldn't keep up. When he got into those little moods of his, no one could. Amalia had her strengths, not in combat, but with people, and on this island, she had connections. And when Yugo came back—he had better—she'd give him a piece of her mind that he wouldn't forget.

 

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No one saw a white scaraleaf in the night sky, and even if they saw Adamai, they wouldn't be able to hit him. The Sufokian fleet had such bad aim, they couldn't consistently hit anything smaller than a mountain, although it might take something that size to threaten them. No, his own safety was the last thing Adamai was worried about at the moment.

Yugo was fine. Well, alive, at least. His Wakfu hadn't left the world, and he didn't  _seem_ to be in great pain. Adamai could feel his brother's presence in the back of his mind, guiding him like a compass.

It wasn't his fault, no matter what Amalia had said. If you were being shot at with incredibly large guns, then whose fault was it? Obviously, the people with the incredibly large guns. And so what if he was a bit blunt with the snobby little human? Wisdom, not power, demands respect, and that bunch of humans had proven little beyond their own foolishness. And now they had his brother.

How had that happened? He was the dragon brother, raised by Grougaloragran the Eternal. Grougal protected his brother with extreme prejudice, but when Adamai tried, he was lucky if he only got stuck as a tofu for a day. What was wrong with him? Why was it always Yugo who saved everyone?

He found Yugo standing on the beach surrounded by torches. And armed soldiers. The prince himself sat on a chair next to him with hardly a concern in the world. Odd. Yugo's hands weren't tied, so he wasn't a prisoner, but he wasn't fighting either. He was just standing there.

Adamai turned into his human shape that was more adept at magic and fell to the ground next to his brother, throwing up a shield to block the Stasis rifles.

"Stop!" the prince yelled to his soldiers. "What did I say about shooting at me? I know you think you're good enough to hit something next to me, but you are not. You, you, and—who else fired? Was it you or you? Be honest. It was you?—and you will all report to General Mofette when your shifts are over for discipline."

The three soldiers mumbled something inaudible. "What was that?" the prince asked.

"Yes, your Majesty," they said in unison.

"And Frida? I trust you to come up with something...appropriate."

The General replied from an open Steamflex on the outside of the ring of soldiers. "With pleasure, Prince Adale."

"And nonlethal."

She hesitated and her shoulders slumped a bit. "Yes your Majesty."

Yugo turned to his brother. "Did everyone make it out safely?"

" _Ieko s'naweerveh tub, piesh dab neh s'pish uthz._ "

Yugo mouthed the draconic words slowly, translating them. "Well that's good. You can tell me the rest on the way back."

"You are leaving?" Adale asked. "Excellent. As pleasant as this ordeal has been, I cordially invite you to get off my island and never return."

Adamai snorted. "You couldn't pay me to come back here." He turned into a Scaraleaf and Yugo jumped on his back.

"I'm sorry it turned out like this," Yugo said to Adale.

The prince stood up, turned his back on them, and left without a word. The brothers flew.

"Keep an eye on their guns," Admai instructed. "You don't need good aim to be lucky."

"They won't fire," Yugo assured him, but he stayed alert all the same. "Hey, Ad, what's a virgin sacrifice?"

_A what?_  "It's, um, a Sacrier marriage ritual," he said.

"You sure?"

"Pretty sure. Why?"

Yugo shrugged. "No reason. I get the feeling Adale doesn't know much about dragons."

They reached Moon Island, a black crescent silhouette in a sea of reflected stars, and landed by the ship where several masked Sadidas were repairing it. Yugo spotted the Captain, jumped off of Adamai's back, and landed on the ship.

"Captain! You made it! How's the ship?"

"I had a feeling you'd turn up alive, Yugo," the Captain replied. "And the ship's fine. She just got a scratch, nothing more."

Yugo peered down through a hole in the deck that a group of Sadidas were fixing. It was too dark to see, but he suspected that it went all the way down through the hull. "Just a scratch? There's a hole through it!"

"We've been through worse," the Captain replied flippantly. "Amalia was worried that the Sufokians might catch up with us, so these Kannibal people offered to work through the night to get it fixed by morning. Honestly, I think I'd rather face one real sea monster than a fleet of mechanical ones."

"Unlikely," Adamai said. "Grougaloragran would have torn the ship in half on principle, and then decided if he trusted us on his island."

"Grougal only did that once," Yugo protested. "And you weren't even with us back then."

Adamai snorted. "And I bet you think that your ship was the only one to sail there."

"Anyway," Yugo said. "Have you seen Amalia around here?"

"Yeah, she went that way towards that ridiculously tall totem over there with a Kannibal named Focus or something."

"You mean Fucus?"

The Captain shrugged. "Sure."

"Botan Fucus, he's the chief," Yugo said.

"Really? I thought the monkey was the chief."

"No, the monkey's their god. Botan Fucus is their chief."

"Well, that does make a bit more sense," she conceded. "No, wait, it doesn't, but that doesn't matter. You should go see Amalia. She seemed pretty worried about you."

Yugo frowned.  _She_  was worried about  _him_? Why? He wasn't the one being shot at. "Alright, I'll see you later then." He waved goodbye and ran off into the woods. Adamai followed, and soon they ran into Amalia walking side by side with a local Sadida.

Az darted into the air, crashed into Yugo's face, and fell into his pocket. Yugo laughed. "Did you miss me, buddy?" In response, Az jumped out of his pocket, flew around his head a few times, and dove back in. Yugo turned to the Kannibal. "Are you Botan?" he asked. "It's hard to tell by just your mask."

The masked man nodded. "It is I, Yugo. On behalf of the tribe, I welcome you once more to our island."

"Thank you for offering to fix our ship again," Yugo replied politely.

"A repaired ship is nothing compared to what you and your friends have done for mine. If you had not helped free us from Willow's tyranny, we never would have survived the following scourge."

"Scourge?" Yugo repeated. "What happened?"

"As I was telling Princess Amalia just now, shortly after you left, we were attacked. They were like a swarm of locusts made of steel, draining the life itself from the island. We held them off as best we could, but in the end they left on their own accord."

Adamai nodded. "Those must have been Noxines. We fought their master when he attacked the Tree of LIfe. You don't have to worry about them coming back. He got what he deserved, right, Yugo?"

Yugo shuffled uncomfortably. "I can't say what anyone deserves, but he won't be coming back." Amalia hadn't spoken since they got back. She just stood there like a statue. "Hey, Amalia, are you alright?"

"Chief Fucus?" she said. "Could you go on ahead? I'll catch up later."

"As you wish, Princess Amalia." The chief continued on his path, leaving the three of them alone.

"Amalia? Is something wrong?"

Amalia took a deep, calming breath. Then she screamed. "WHAT IN SADIDA'S NAME WERE YOU THINKING!"

"Uh, what?"

"Is something wrong?  _Yes_ , something's wrong! What's wrong is that you tried to get yourself killed  _again!_  You can't  _do_  that, Yugo. You're not invincible."

"But—"

"No buts! Never do that again! Promise me that you will never do that again!"

"I can't!" Yugo blurted out. "I promised your dad already that I'd look after you, and I saw one way to get everyone out of there alive, and I took it."

Amalia stopped dead. "You...promised my dad...that you...would look after...me." She palmed her face and groaned. "Darn it, Yugo, do you know what this means?"

"Uh, that your dad cares?"

"All my life, I've always had a chaperone, a body guard, a baby sitter. I thought that this was my chance to finally leave home without one. It's bad enough to be stuck with a baby sitter when you're nearly fifteen years old. It's even worse when the baby sitter is younger than you.

She turned and walked off into the forest. Yugo didn't follow her. He plopped down on the ground and stared into the empty shadows.

"You know, there's something that I've always liked about that girl," Adamai said lightly. "Oh, wait, never mind. No there isn't." Yugo didn't even crack a smile, so he tried again. "She'll come around. Tomorrow morning, she'll realized the irony of acting like a child for being given a baby sitter, and she'll—"

"It's not that," Yugo said. "She was worried about me. You can't blame someone for caring."

Adamai disagreed, but he didn't' press the point. "So what is it?"

Yugo looked at him with sad, worried eyes. "I convinced Adale to stop firing at you by threatening him. I told him that if any of you died, I'd kill him."

_What's wrong with that?_  Adamai almost asked him that, but he stopped himself just in time. They were different, not just in who they were, but who they wanted to be. "Well congratulations," he said instead. "You told a lie. I didn't think you had it in you."

"But that's just the thing," Yugo protested. "I don't think I was lying."

"You can tell it's a good lie if you manage to fool yourself." Yugo gave him a flat look, so he decided to pull back a bit. "Look, if you don't believe me, we can test this scientifically."

He scanned the woods for suitable prey, jumped into some bushes, and came back with a frantic gerbil. He handed it to Yugo. The creature panicked for a bit, then calmed down in the crook of the boy's arm.

"Now, I want you to kill it," Adamai instructed.

Yugo looked up in shock. "What? Why?"

"For science. Let's pretend, for the sake of the experiment, that this is an evil gerbil. It will kill your Tofu, your friends, and destroy this entire world unless you kill it first."

Yugo looked down at the small creature. "I can't."

"Why not? It will grow old and die in a few years, it has no intelligence compared to even a human, no imagination to dream. If you snapped its neck, who would care?"

"I won't!"

"And yet you think you can kill a man."

"That's different!"

"Yes," Adamai agreed. "By several orders of magnitude. I know you were upset. If something happened, you might have handed out a few bruises, maybe sunk a ship, but you wouldn't have killed anyone. You like humans too much. I doubt you could kill one if your life depended on it." Yugo didn't seem to agree, but he didn't argue either. "Well, get some sleep. We still have a lot to do tomorrow." Adamai turned and walked into the night, leaving his brother to work out thoughts that only he could deal with.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yugo's response to all this will come in the next chapter. As usual, you telling me what you think of my story is the most effective way of me knowing what you think of my story. The beginning quote was a toss up between Franklin and two others. The others included Magneto's line from the X-Men, "We are the future, Charles, not them. They no longer matter." Also there was Hamlet's "What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason, how infinite in faculty! In form and moving how express and admirable! In action how like an Angel! In apprehension how like a god!"
> 
> I also spent a lot of time editing Suricatessen's story, "Kings and Shadows." If you haven't heard of it, I'd strongly recommend looking it up. It is, for the time being, exclusively on fanfiction.net.


	10. Neverland

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Second star to the right and straight on 'til morning."  
> \- J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan

When the sun rose the next morning on Moon Island, Yugo found himself alone. But he had a plan. He yawned, stretched, and went to work.

He found Adamaï near the ship and Amalia in the village, and he told them his plan.

"You call that a plan?" Amalia retorted skeptically. "That doesn't sound like it will work at all." She didn't mention the angry words she spoke the night before, but Yugo could tell she regretted them, and Yugo was ready to move on and accept her apology, unuttered as it was.

"Yes, but that's the plan," he explained. "The plan  _is_  to fail. That's how it will work. No one will see that coming. We can't fail! Unless we succeed, but if we do, we'll win anyway."

"Makes sense to me," Adamaï said.

"No it doesn't," she scoffed.

"The only thing I'm worried about is the Captain," Yugo said. "She brought us all the way across the ocean, and now..."

"We're not good luck for her," Amalia noted. "I'll talk to her, You two go get started on the Zaap. You'll want to ask Botan permission first."

Yugo nodded as Amalia walked off. "Hey, bro," Adamaï said. "I bet I can find the chief before you can."

"Yeah? And what happens to the loser?"

"He'll be related to me."

"We'll see. On your mark..."

"Get set..."

"Go!"

Yugo zaapped through the village, looking for anyone who looked especially chiefy. Now what did his mask look like again? No, this was taking too long. He switched to Wakfu-vision and scanned the village. One of them stood out, the most powerful creature there. In a tree.

"Moon!" he called out, zaapping up to the local god. "I need to talk to you."

"Ook?" Moon asked, offering him a banana-citrus.

"No, not now. I need to find the chief, Botan Fucus. Do you know where he is?"

"Ook!" Moon said with a nod. "Ack awap, ock mopu ip, eep emep gip."

"Uh huh, uh huh. Maybe you could just point me in his general direction, that would be—"

"Found him!" Adamaï called out.

"Dang it! Already?"

"I'm confused," the chief said, stepping out onto the balcony of his treehouse. "Was I supposed to be hiding?"

"No, you're fine," Yugo said. "I'll talk to you later, Moon."

"Ook," Moon stated.

"Thanks, you too." Yugo jumped through a portal and landed on Botan's balcony. "Good morning, Chief. Did you sleep well?"

"Um, yes, I did." He seemed to have taken being woken up by a playful dragon well. He was cool like that, but living with Moon probably got him used to that sort of thing. "What are you doing here?"

"We need your permission to build a Zaap portal," Adamaï said.

Botan paused. "Zaap? What is a Zaap?"

Yugo realized that there weren't any Zaaps on the island, and they probably weren't in the tribal lore. "It's a portal that lasts forever and goes really far," he explained. "It's an issue because it can be accessed from both sides—"

"And the other side of the Zaap leads to the Enutrof Kingdom," Adamaï added.

"And you remember Ruel, don't you? He's an Enutrofs, and they aren't dangerous, but they might try to dig for gold and sell you stuff if they get through—"

"While on this side of the Zaap, you're spitting distance from an expanding imperial superpower. Chances are, pretty soon they'll burn down your forest and replace it with an impregnable fortress of doom with canons the size of volcanoes."

"Do you really think they would?" Yugo asked.

"I can't see them doing anything else."

Yugo nodded thoughtfully. "You may have a point. So anyway, our Zaap portal could be a way in and a way out, which could be good and bad depending on a lot of things, and we wanted to know where we could build it."

Botan paused. Yugo couldn't see his face through his mask, but the chief had thoughtful posture even if his mask didn't change expression. "This Zaap construct would need to be somewhere we could access and control," Botan mused. "Your friend Ruel...he was the one with the shovel, correct?"

"Yeah, he likes his shovel," Yugo replied. "It's an Enutrof thing. I think I've only met one who didn't carry one."

The chief sat for several minutes in his thinking posture. "Danger from one side, to open up trouble from another," he mused. "An exit…and an entrance." Botan's vegedoll started giggling hysterically and rolling around on the floor. Yugo and Adamaï shared a concerned glance, but Botan didn't seem to notice. "I see," he said at last. "I think I have just the place."

 

WWW

The anchored ship rocked gently with the waves. Amalia remembered the first time she had stepped into a ship. It had cost them their entire winnings from her first Boufbowl match, but it was worth it. Saltwater wasn't a very Sadida thing to enjoy, but the promise of being able to travel to the horizon and the horizon after that, well, there were some places that you just couldn't get to on foot.

And if she wanted to stay in one place, she'd have stayed at home.

"Amalia!" the captain called. "Are you lot ready to go?"

"Yes," she said. "We're leaving. I've just come to say goodbye."

The captain looked at her solemnly, then jumped off the ship and onto the beach. "You have another way back?"

Amalia nodded. "Yugo and Adamaï are building a Zaap right now that connects to one they built before we left. We're going to try to rescue Ruel, and we'll need to come when no one expects us. And with all the nonsense with New Sufokia, it might be best if we stayed away from open waters for a while, and it would be better for you if we weren't with you."

The Captain put a hand on Amalia's shoulder. "Well, my fine flowery friend, while traveling with your group is seldom safe, it has never yet been dull, and I hope our paths cross again."

"You do?" Amalia doubted that the captain's ship could handle another voyage with them. "Anyway, I have to give you this." She handed her a bag of kamas.

"What is this?"

"Payment," Amalia explained. "For getting us this far."

"This isn't what we agreed on," the captain said. "You promised me a share of the treasure you were looking for, and unless I missed something, we didn't find any treasure."

"Yes! That's why I'm giving you this instead."

"I never would have survived Oma if it weren't for you."

"See, that doesn't make any sense," Amalia said. "If it weren't for us, your ship wouldn't have been in danger in the first place."

"This was a treasure hunt. If it were safe, it would be boring. I knew the risks when I agreed to take you."

"No you didn't, none of us did." The captain hadn't accepted payment the first time they traveled with her, and while Ruel would be thrilled for any discount, he wasn't in charge of the group's kamas anymore. Amalia was, and she paid her debts. She stood up straight and puffed out her chest a bit. "This is just allowance money for me, anyway," she explained with a hint of princess-like disdain in her voice. "Keep it. I have plenty more where that came from."

"Well, if you insist," the captain said reluctantly. "Though the real treasure of this trip was coming here. Bontarans are crazy for tropical fruit like they have here, and no other merchant will come to this island to trade because they're convinced they'll be eaten!"

"Actually, they might," Amalia admitted. "They are called Kannibals for a reason."

"All ports have risks," she shrugged. "Some have docking fees, others have primitive people-eaters." She grinned. "Like I said, safe is boring. I'd be more worried about you."

"About us?"

The captain laughed. "You're on your way to rob the most tight fisted man in the World of Twelve. If I were you, I might prefer a rematch with the Sufokians."

"We're not robbing him," Amalia protested. "We're freeing one of his prisoners."

The captain laughed again. "And I am  _certain_  that the king will understand the difference."

 

WWW

Yugo wrote the Draconic words on the arc of the Zaap, linking it to the one they left in Enutrof. He liked to think that he left the friends he made across the world better off than when he met them, but if the Sufokians followed them here for revenge, or just to expand their empire, then there would be nothing Yugo could do to stop them. But he could give his friends who lived on Moon Island a way out.

Yugo saw Amalia return just as he was putting the finishing touches on the Zaap. "Hey, Amalia, you're back!" Yugo called down to her.

"You built it on top of a totem," she called back. " _Why_  are you building the Zaap on top of a giant totem?"

"I suggested it," Botan said. "If we are to open a door to a world of shovel bearers, I'd rather keep this side off the ground."

It made sense to Yugo, and Adamaï was happy to see Moon's hammer in action that made the totem, but Amalia didn't seem too pleased. But then again, she couldn't fly, either, so getting to the top would be harder for her.

"You ready, bro?" Adamaï asked.

Yugo looked down, holding on to the edge of the portal. The totem was maybe fifty feet high, so anyone coming in could get hurt if they didn't watch their step. He made a mental note to leave a warning sign on the other side. "Ready," he said.

Standing on opposite sides of the portal, they put their hands together. Energy arced between them out to the edges of the Zaap and exploded, hurling them both into the air. A large, white flower caught Yugo before he splattered against anything. Adamaï, on the other hand, crashed through two trees and left a crater in the ground before climbing to his feet.

"Honestly, Yugo," Amalia said exasperatedly, "you're going to break your neck one of these days."

"You know, I don't think the Zaaps are supposed to explode like that," Yugo said.

"We are working with the simplest version," Adamaï admitted. "I guess we could ask Balthazar if we can add a few more safeties next time we're around."

"How?" Amalia asked.

"It's complicated, I'll explain later," Yugo said quickly. "Right now, we have a rescue mission."

"I'll race you there!" Adamaï said eagerly.

Yugo grinned. "You're on!"

"Don't mind me," Amalia said, slowly climbing up the totem. "I'll catch up later."

Yugo took one last look at the Kannibals of Moon Island, and zaaped into the portal. Rescuing Ruel could ruin their chances of forming an alliance with the Enutrof Kingdom for years, if not longer. But while there were some people in the world who could make the hard decisions, people who could sacrifice their closest friends for some metaphysical "greater good," Yugo wasn't one of them. And he never wanted to be.

"Twenty Kamas."

Yugo looked around and saw an elderly Enutrof woman sitting on a nearby stump some twenty feet from the Zaap. "Pardon?"

"Twenty Kamas," she repeated. She had poofy, white hair, wrinkled, leathery skin, and clothes that looked older than she was.

"What's twenty Kamas?" Yugo asked.

"Now isn't the time to buy stuff," Adamaï said, flying down next to him. They had entered the Zaap from opposite sides, so Yugo didn't see who got through first.

"I'm not buying anything," Yugo explained. "I just got here, and that lady over there starting saying—"

"Twenty Kamas."

"Exactly," Yugo finished.

Amalia climbed out of the Zaap, breathing heavily. "You really need to make those totems...shorter." She stopped and looked around. "So what's going on?"

"Twenty Kamas."

"I'm not sure," Yugo translated. "I think she's trying to sell us something, but I don't..."

"Fine," the Enutrof said.

"What?"

"For trespassing," she explained, standing up from her stump. "This is my land. I didn't invite you here. You're trespassing. You pay the fine. Twenty Kamas."

"Oh," Yugo said slowly. When they built the Zaap on the Enutrof side, they didn't see anyone, but they didn't stay around very long to check.

"That's ridiculous!" Amalia protested. "This is a  _Zaap_! We built it a few weeks ago—"

" _We_  built it a few weeks ago," Adamaï interrupted.

"They built it a few weeks ago," she continued. "That sort of thing hasn't been seen since the dawn of time. If it's money you're interested in, you could just charge a toll for everyone who wants to go through it."

"And I'm starting now," the Enutrof said. "Twenty Kamas. If you don't pay, I'll have you arrested."

Adamaï smirked. "You can try."

Yugo put a hand on his shoulder. "Uh, bro..." he cautioned.

"You can't say that this isn't ridiculous," Adamaï said. "I mean, why should we worry about trespassing? By this time tomorrow, we're going to be Enutrof's most wanted anyway."

The woman's ears perked up. "What?"

Amalia turned to her. "Are you familiar with the expression, 'I'd tell you, but then I'd have to kill you'?"

"What?" she said more loudly. "My hearing isn't what it used to be. I know you're talking, but all I can hear is just noise."

"Good," Amalia said, turning back to her friends.

"I suppose it's out of the question to just send her to the moon," Adamaï said.

"Do you mean the celestial body, the island, or the monkey?" Amalia asked.

"Yes."

"We can't do that," Yugo said. "We're heroes, not bullies. We have rules."

"I obey the rules of physics," Adamaï protested, hovering a few inches above the ground. "When it's convenient. Look, I'm sorry, being extorted makes me violent. But if you don't want to hurt anyone today, why don't we just leave? We can fly—"

"You can fly," Amalia corrected.

"I can fly, and we can probably break the old man out of prison before the old hag can even call the guards."

Amalia shook her head. "There are two things very wrong with that. First of all, freeing Ruel is going to be a very delicate operation. We need to plan it carefully and wait for the right time for this to work, and if we have the guards chasing after us the whole time, we lose all of that."

" _Successfully_  freeing Ruel is a delicate operation," Yugo said. "Failing to rescue him is a piece of cake, and like I said, you can't fail at failing. We can't fail."

"Which still doesn't make any sense to me," Amalia said. "Second, this is our gateway into the world of crime. As far as criminal gateways go, breaking a friend out of prison has flair. But trespassing? That's nearly as pathetic as being wanted for loitering."

"So you want to throw money at that lady so you can look good?" Adamaï asked.

"Looking good is very important."

"You're only encouraging them. If you keep on paying people for this kind of nonsense, they'll never stop."

"Yes, but they'll never stop for other people," she explained. "We'll never come back here again—at least I hope not—so that will be someone else's problem."

Adamaï glared at her and turned to Yugo. "So, what do you think?"

"I don't think it's my decision," he said, writing a warning on the Zaap. "It's Amalia's. Remember when we separated our duties? Amalia was left in charge of the finances, so if she wants to give the old lady some Kamas, then that's her choice."

"Ha!" Amalia said triumphantly.

"I don't recall a lot of 'we' in that decision," Adamaï said sullenly.

"By Sadida's Garden, Adamaï, it's twenty Kamas." She approached the Enutrof woman and pulled out some money from her pocket.

"Sixty Kamas," the woman said curtly.

"Sixty...what? But...no! You said twenty Kamas. Repeatedly."

"Each," the woman explained. "Twenty, twenty, twenty. Sixty. Sixty Kamas."

Amalia counted the Kamas in her hand quickly. "I give up," she said finally. "Adamaï, send her to the moon."

 

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The three of them then made their way to prison. They had already wasted enough time on their trip to Oma, and hopefully, the king wouldn't expect them to be desperate enough to break Ruel out for another two weeks. Unfortunately, one loud, unexpected, and painful encounter with the Enutrof security system landed them once again in front of the Enutrof King.

The king sat on his golden throne, stroking his phorror. He didn't look angry, but neither did he look pleased. If anything, he just looked tired. "So, that buried treasure you promised me. That's not coming, is it?"

Amalia shook her head. "Unfortunately, your Majesty, another has plundered the gold before we arrived." Adamaï growled at that. He couldn't say anything, though. The guards had muzzled him so he couldn't breathe fire, and had bound his hands and wings for good measure. It had been hard to convince him to put up with that, but while he didn't burn off anyone's face, he still left smoldering footprints on the way back. Yugo got off easy with just a pair of handcuffs. "Perhaps we could...reconsider our arrangement?" she continued hopefully. "Ruel Stroud is no profit to you dead."

"You can find profit anywhere, if you know how. Perhaps he will gain me no Kamas, but an example of the fate of thieves is always valuable. Stroud's fate has long since been decided, but perhaps you should focus on your own. You were found breaking into prison in the attempt to free a condemned criminal. Do you have anything to say in your defense?"

"Mmm hmm hmfm fm mmf mmhmm!" Adamaï growled through his muzzle. "Mm hmmhm fhm mhhmmhm mmhmmhm fm mhhm mm hmm!"

Yugo hoped that the king couldn't understand him. Threatening the king's descendants for a hundred generations wouldn't help anyone. "Ruel is our friend," he said. "He was always there for us, and we owe it to him to be there for him now."

"Right," Amalia added quickly. "And we always pay our debts. When Nox the Xelor threatened to wipe out the entire Sadida people, my kingdom's military did not stop him, we did. And between the untold destruction Nox was able to unleash and the return of the New Sufokians with the empire they are rapidly establishing, the world is not the safe place that it used to be. At times like this, it pays to have the gratitude of heroes." She gave the king a meaningful look, but he just sighed in exasperation.

"This is the time to defend your own actions," he said. "Not to excuse his. But if you refuse to act in your own defense, then you will wait in prison until I decide what to do with you."

"What?" Amalia gasped. "But...but I'm a Sadida  _princess._  Does diplomatic immunity mean nothing to you? You can't just  _arrest_  me like some common criminal!"

"I can and I will," the king said. "And I will inform your father what you have been doing."

Amalia's face paled. "Oh  _please_  no!"

"Yes!" He turned to Yugo. "And I suppose I'll tell your king as well. Qilby is still staying with the Sadidas, isn't he?"

Yugo hesitated. "Actually, he's away, on..."

"Mmhm hmhmmm?" Adamaï offered.

"Right! He's away on royal assignment. He'll be gone for a while."

"Oh. Well, it will be for whenever he gets back," the king muttered. He motioned to some guards. "Take them away. I've wasted enough time with them as it is."

"Wait!" Yugo said quickly. "If you're going to execute Ruel, could you let us share a cell with him?" The king glared at him. "Please. He's our friend."

The king's gaze softened, and he turned away in frustration. "So be it. It cuts down on upkeep to stuff you all in one place anyway." He waved to the guards again, who dragged them away to the prison.

 

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Enitalp eased himself into his bed. He always went to bed tired. It was the rare day that he didn't get up tired. Maybe he'd sleep better if he had a softer bed, but he didn't become the richest man in the World of Twelve by throwing money away, and just because he was a king didn't mean that he had the right to indulge himself.

"I really hoped that those Tofu people would have been able to deal with it," he said, scratching his phorror between the ears. "It seemed perfect. Getting paid for not executing someone? It would have solved everything." His phorror growled contentedly, unaware of his master's woes. "But instead, I have no reward, and an executioner to pay."

It was just another drop in the bucket, but the bucket was overflowing as it was. Enitalp, king of the Enutrof Kingdom, closed his eyes. "I just wish all my problems would go away."

 

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"You've got company, Stroud."

Yugo, Amalia, and Adamaï were dropped into a pit and landed with a splat. Yugo stood up, wishing that the guards had untied his hands before throwing him down into the cell. He squinted in the darkness, then gave up. He closed his eyes and focused to activate his Wakfu vision.

"Ruel!" he said happily. "It's so good to see you!"

The Enutrof's craggy face broke into a grin. "Hey, kid. What news from the outside?"

"Well, we went to Oma Island to use Grougaloragran's horde to bail you out, but the New Sufokians got there first and claimed the whole thing."

"Those worthless, gutless, thieving, worm-eating fish!" he exploded. "May their shovel's rust and may they drown in the ocean's depths!"

"Mm hmm hmfmmhm," Adamaï said in agreement, still muzzled.

"So we decided that if we couldn't bail you out, we'd break you out," Yugo continued.

"And then you got captured?" Ruel guessed.

"It's all part of the plan," Yugo assured him.

Amalia snorted disdainfully. "Plan? I've seen plans before. This seems like improv. Also, how do you survive down here, Ruel? It smells worse than your bag."

"Yeah, well, I tried an escape attempt of my own," Ruel replied. "And now Philip's not my friend anymore. Also, they confiscated my bucket."

Amalia cocked an eyebrow in confusion, but Ruel didn't elaborate. "Anyway," she said, "as much as I enjoy the atmosphere in this dark, unhygienic pit of despair, I'd rather step on rusty nails than stay a minute longer than I need to."

"Right," Yugo said. "Now stand back. This is going to take up a lot of room."

"Mm mmhm mm hm hmm  _mm_?" Adamaï asked.

"Well, of course," Yugo replied. "The guards won't even be able to guess how we got out, and I think they'll like it there."

"Can you really understand him?" Amalia asked.

"Of course I can. We're brothers."

"But he can't talk."

Adamaï growled. "So? Neither can Az. But seriously, back up, or you'll be cut in half." Amalia and Ruel pressed themselves against the cell wall. Yugo took a deep breath. "BALTHAZAR! OPEN UP!" His voice echoed through the prison, and then there was silence.

"I don't know what you're trying to do," Ruel said, "but if there's magic involved, you'll have to deal with that first." He pointed up at an anti-magic orb hanging on the other side of the steel grating.

"One of those again?" Yugo shook his head in frustration. When they were captured by the Justice Knight, he had to throw his hat at it before he could make portals again.

"Mm hmm m mhm-hmhm mh?" Adamaï asked.

"Yep."

"Hmmhmm? M hmhm hmhm hm fm mm!"

"Well, now's your chance. We may be here for a while. I don't think my hat can even fit through those bars."

" _Hmm_?"

"Long story. I'll tell you later."

"Hm. M hm mrhm hm."

"Really? How?"

"Hmhm," Adamaï replied dramatically.

Yugo sighed. "See, that's the whole point of that thing, to keep us from—"

"Mhm? Mrm mh."

"I trust you. So what do you need?"

Adamaï looked up at the orb thoughtfully. "Hmf hm mm."

"Really?"

"Hm."

"That might actually work, come to think of it," Yugo admitted. "Okay, guys, you heard him. Boowolf pile!" Yugo enthusiastically bodyslammed his brother, but Amalia and Ruel just looked at him in confusion. "Guys? What are you waiting for?"

"What are you doing?" Amalia asked.

"Jumping on Adamaï," he explained.

"Yes, but why?"

Yugo sighed and stood up. "We need to open a portal to get out of here, but that anti-magic orb is stopping us from opening one, so Adamaï is going to try to use magic to break that thing, but he can't use magic with that thing looking at him, so we have to cover him so that thing can't see him. Any questions?"

"I have one," Amalia said. "What?"

"Look," Yugo said. "Just jump on Adamaï, and everything will make sense."

"Well, okay," Amalia said hesitantly. Yugo lay down on Adamaï and Amalia lay down on both of them, careful not to get too much mud on her, and then she grunted as Ruel bodyslammed all three of them. "Oof! Reul, how come you're on top?"

"Patience," he said contentedly. "It comes with age."

At the bottom of the pile, Yugo could hear Adamaï muttering the words to a spell, and above them he heard the orb start to sizzle.

"It worked!" Ruel cheered.

"Good," Amalia growled. "Now get off of me."

"Are you sure? I'm kind of comfortable right now."

Amalia shoved him off and climbed to her feet. "I can breathe again," she said. "And that would mean so much more if I were  _anywhere_ else."

Yugo and Adamaï stood up, and Adamaï's chains fell from him as he ripped off his muzzle. "And I can talk again!"

"Every flower wilts, I suppose," Amalia said.

Adamaï shot a jet of flame into the air, causing Amalia to yelp and the steel grating to glow orange. "That Enutrof should know better than to imprison a dragon!"

"Well, coming back to find us all gone should clue him in," Yugo said. "Let's try this one more time."

"I still don't know what you're trying to do," Amalia protested, but she pressed herself against the cell wall all the same.

Yugo took a deep breath. "BALTHAZAR! ONE MORE TIME!"

A brilliant white rift opened in the middle of the pit with blue lighting striking out from the center, then the light turned to darkness with lines of energy spiralling outward. It wasn't a common portal, or even a Zaap. This circle of light and shadow could break through the limits of reality to a place where time had never touched.

He hadn't talked much about what happened the first time he went into one of these portals. Everything that had happened between the World of Twelve and Emrub was too wonderful. And too terrible. Ever since the Crimson Claws, he had avoided talking about Qilby and he had barely mentioned Balthazar. There would be questions, questions that he wouldn't want to answer. But he would have to face them. Some of what he had seen was too terrible and too wonderful to keep to himself.

"Come on," he said. "There are some friends I want you to meet."

 

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Stories fluttered from mouth to ear about a land where time never past, where children would never age or grow up. That place had a thousand names on a thousand different worlds, but in the World of Twelve and among the Eliatropes who came to live there, they knew that land as Emrub.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think I'd have more fond memories of forming dog piles with my siblings if I wasn't always at the bottom. If you're trying to decipher Adamaï's mumblings to figure out what he's saying, stop. There is no code, no secret message. The same goes for the monkey. Honestly, how much work do you think I'm going to put into this story? There are no secrets to be found.
> 
> I am not lying.
> 
> You may be wondering how Adamaï was able to break an anti-magic orb with magic, especially when he was too muzzled to speak. Well, you need to understand two very important things about magic. First, it has rules, rules that can never be broken. Second, you might never understand those rules, because the few rules that make sense can change, and the many that don't change don't make sense.
> 
> Finally, you may be wondering where Az was the entire chapter. And what about Junior, Ruel's Phorror? Was he imprisoned with Ruel, or is he off somewhere else? What? What's that? You aren't wondering where the small, adorable animals are? Well, okay then. I just won't tell you.
> 
> I'd also like to thank Suricatessen for editing this chapter. If you haven't read his stuff, you should. It's pretty amazing.


	11. The Return of the King

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Put aside the Ranger. Become who you were born to be."  
> -J. R. R. Tolkien

 

The world was white and endless. There was no sensation, no feeling of the floor he stood on, no warmth nor cold, but Yugo shivered all the same. He hated this place.

"Where are we?" Amalia asked.

"Nowhere," Adamaï answered. "It's called the Blank Dimension, but it's nowhere by definition. Nothing for as far as the eye can see."

"It's roomy," Ruel said, stretching. "And clean."

"We won't be here long," Yugo said. "Another portal will open up in a few minutes. Sometimes it takes a while. Time gets funny here, so...oh no." In the distance, Yugo saw a slight spec, the one other person in the whole dimension.

Qilby approached timidly, desperately, his one hand clutching a yellow flower. "Yugo...please."

"Keep your distance, Qilby," Adamaï growled. The dragon bore too many scars to forget the traitor's crimes. "We know what you want and you know you can't leave."

Qilby kept his eyes on Yugo. Yugo wanted to turn away, but he couldn't. He owed him that much. "You can't leave me here!" Qilby begged. "I didn't leave you!" He swallowed hard and choked out in a whisper, "I didn't leave you."

"That's Qilby?" Amalia asked. "What happened to him?"

"Justice," Adamaï replied. "Rounded to the nearest possibility."

"He's starting to look his age," Ruel noted.

"You never wanted to talk about what happened," Amalia said. "I thought...I thought you just killed him."

"Kill me?" Qilby repeated. "Kill  _me_?" He laughed so forcibly it almost sounded like a request.

"It wouldn't do any good," Adamaï explained. "He'd just return to his Dofus and torment his sister until they hatched, and then he'd try to destroy the world again."

"I wouldn't," Qilby protested. "I swear I wouldn't. Please have mercy!"

"Mercy?" Adamaï snapped. "Why don't you look up 'draconian' in the dictionary sometime? And while you're at it, look up 'genocide.' You tried to destroy my world three times, twice with Mechasms, and once with Shushus. You deserve  _no_  mercy."

Qilby fell to his knees, his one hand still clutching the flower. "You don't know my curse," he sobbed. "None of you ever knew."

"No," Adamaï admitted. "All I know is that when you were free, my home, my people, and my world were in danger. And now they're not."

A portal opened up next to them, and Qilby eyed it with a desperate hunger. "If you try to follow us," Yugo said, "ten thousand orphans will send you back." Ruel and Amalia went first into the portal, then Adamaï, and Yugo entered last, never taking his eyes off of Qilby, and Qilby never took his eyes off of him.

He didn't care what Qilby deserved. He didn't care about his crimes. But as long as Qilby put everything and everyone he loved at risk, there was little he could afford to give him. That didn't make it any easier, though.

Part of him hoped it never would.

 

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In the pit, there was nothing. And then there was God. Xelor, once known as Nox, had become more aware of the limits of his near omniscience as those limits continued to diminish. And the concept of a place beyond his realm of cognisance, beyond time, a stagnant world with life without death, it intrigued him.

_He_  had gone back there. Xelor floated in the spot where the portal opened, where reality slowly mended itself.  _He_ had gone back to where  _they_  were, and if  _they_  were there, then  _she_  had to be somewhere near there, if she even still existed. And  _she_ was the secret to finding  _them._  And as long as he had been alive and ever since he died, it had always been about  _them._

 

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Yugo stepped out of nothing into a world forever young. Since his fight with Qilby had first brought him to the small worlds of Emrub, he had returned several times to the Islands of the Mists with Adamaï. He had never gotten used to it. The red-brown dragon, Balthazar, navigated their way, but they were never in any real danger of getting trapped in the Blank Dimension like Qilby. No, what bothered Yugo was that Emrub was the end of his journey.

Ever since he had received the message from Grougaloragran, he had been trying to find his real family. Finding his brother on Oma was only the halfway point. Emrub, with its ten thousand orphaned exiles, was the end.

He had found his people, but not his family. If he had found thousands of little brothers and sisters, he'd have been ecstatic, but instead, he had found a kingdom. No, not even that. When the children saw him, they did not see a king, they saw a savior, and that hope, focused for millennia outside of time, had formed a gap between them larger than any Yugo had shared with his enemies.

"Oh, wow," Amalia whispered, dumbstruck. "Where are...wow."

"Those are a lot of hats," Ruel noted.

The Eliatropes crowded around the portal for a better look, the smallest children on the shoulders of the taller ones. On nearby planetoids, more children gathered to watch them arrive. In the distance, Balthazar floated on a cushion with the Eliacube.

Adamaï rose into the air, beaming with the enthusiasm he always bore when he was surrounded by his people. "People of Emrub, may I present the Brotherhood of the Tofu! Or at least most of them. The green one's Amalia, the grey one's Ruel. They're easy to get mixed up, but you'll get used to it."

"We're what?" Amalia protested reflexively. "Where are we?"

"Emrub," Adamaï explained. "And these are the Eliatrope people."

Yugo watched them look around in wonder as he remembered his own reaction when he first arrived. "This is Locke," he explained, introducing them, "and that's Volten, over there is Raphen, the little one is Bina—"

"I'm not going to remember all of them," Amalia said.

"And the dragon over there is Balthazar. He's pretty much in charge. Hi, Balthazar!"

The brown dragon's scales turned white as he approached them, the Eliacube slowly orbited around the space above his head. "Balthazar welcomes you, and you are free to return any time you need to," he growled. "But this is the first time you have returned in the company of...others."

Amalia took a step back, and Ruel eyed Balthazar and the children warily, as though wishing he had his shovel. The Eliatrope children also watched Yugo's friends with concern that they had never shown Yugo. Of course, they knew Yugo and Adamaï before they came here, albeit past incarnations of the brothers, and they even personally knew Qilby, and hated him for that knowledge. But Sadidas and Enutrofs? Their exodus had happened before the twelve gods had even found their world.

"They're my friends," Yugo said firmly. "If it weren't for them, I wouldn't have gotten anywhere. Besides, there's no rule against them coming here, is there?"

"None that you have made," Balthazar replied. "Balthazar only asks you to be cautious in whom you bring to this sanctuary."

"You can trust them as much as you can trust me," Yugo assured him. Balthazar nodded slowly, satisfied. He had probably examined their auras, too, but you couldn't always judge someone by that. Sometimes good people were tricked into doing terrible things, and being pure evil hadn't stopped Rubilax from helping them save the world, but it didn't hurt to check.

"We're not going to stay here long," Yugo continued. "We got in trouble with some people that we don't want to fight, so we're going to give them time to get tired of looking for us before we go back when their guard is down."

"If you have departed from a place of conflict, Balthazar can send you to a place of safety," the dragon said.

"No no no," Yugo said quickly. "I left Az back in Enutrof, and Amalia had to leave her doll behind so it wouldn't get confiscated. We're fine, really. We just need a place to wait."

 

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Fortunately, Emrub was designed as a place to wait. At least, that was how Ruel understood it. It wasn't a bad place for waiting, and he had spent more than a month already doing just that. Now, his cell was...cozy. It wasn't nice, but it didn't have forced labor like they did in some of the prisons he'd been incarcerated in. But Emrub was  _incredible._  They had worlds—or "islands," as the kids called them—that he could leap to if he had a running start. And if his hip wasn't bothering him.

"Hey, kid!" he called to a passing Eliatrope. "Have you seen Yugo around here?"

The Eliatrope, a boy with dark brown hair and a yellow hat, looked only a few years younger than Yugo. His eyes began glowing blue and he pointed at the ground. "He's right there. Do you want me to take you to him?"

Ruel followed the boy's finger. Either Yugo was on the other side of the world, or on one of the islands beyond. But he didn't need to talk to Yugo at all. What interested him was that the boy offered to take Ruel to Yugo, not to bring Yugo to him. Yugo was a young Eliatrope, and Ruel was an old Enutrof, and wasn't half as quick.

Ruel saw two possibilities. Either only Eliatropes were important in their culture, and they wouldn't inconvenience one of theirs for a foreigner, or Yugo was very important indeed. He remembered Qilby say something about the Council of Six, but what did that  _mean_?

_I need to find a way to talk to the nanny,_  he thought. But he doubted that Balthazar would be as open as a random child, not without a heap of goodwill.  _What would a dragon want that I could give?_

"Mister?" the boy asked. "Is there anything else?"

Balthazar was here to watch over the children, so maybe he could give them something? He didn't have anything to give them, but he was Ruel Stroud. He could sell a man his own doorknob, and more than once he had. "Yes, actually. Yugo told me you and your friends helped him in his fight against Qilby."

The boy looked uncomfortable—a distaste for violence?—but he stood up straighter. "I wasn't much...Yugo did all the work, and he didn't really need anyone besides Shinonome."

Shinonome? Wasn't that Qilby's dragon sister?"  _Interesting._  "Well, yeah," he said easily. "But what does strength matter? You need strength to end the fight, but to start it, you need  _courage_."

"The Traitor," the boy said. "He killed my...our parents. I couldn't just watch him win."

"I think your parents would be proud of you," Ruel said softly. The boy nodded, and his eyes watered. They were digging deep here. Good.  _But tread softly on hallowed graves._  "I've traveled a lot through the World of Twelve, and Yugo is the bravest man I have ever met." He didn't know if there was a culture that had saving the world as a rite of passage into manhood, but there should be. "I've been following him since he started trying to find his real family, and I didn't know what he'd find or if I'd still be around to see it."

Ruel knelt down and put a hand on the boy's shoulder. "But after coming here and hearing about all you've done, I can really see the family resemblance."

He expected the boy to be flattered, but the kid was stunned speechless.  _You want courage, kid? I can sell you that._  "There's a game I sometimes play," Ruel said, moving on quickly. "It requires courage more than anything, so of course Yugo was a pro at it as soon as he started. In fact, if you get some of your friends together, I'll show you how to play. I think it'll be right up your alley. Official matches need gloves and shields, but really, all you need is a ball..."

 

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Far above the main island, Adamaï floated with the Crimson Dofus. Of course, all he had to do was turn around, and he'd be far below the main island, for all the difference it made.

He always spent most of his Emrub visits with Shinonome. She had her brother's flawless memory, so even in her Dofus, she remembered things that Balthazar had never learned. At least that was the idea. But whenever he asked her about complex spells, she would always say, "Why don't you ask Balthazar about that?" or "Balthazar would be able to explain that better."

And yet, he kept coming back to her. It wasn't because he thought she'd be lonely. The children loved Shinonome as much as they despised her brother. No, what always drew him was that she had a brother who still lived. Grougaloragran, Phaeris, and Balthazar had lost their siblings millennia ago, and while they all could teach him how to be a dragon, only Shinonome could teach him how to be a brother.

"How'd you do it?" he asked softly. "I mean, saving our people and an entire world is pretty noble, but if Yugo became a raging psychopath, I'd probably follow him into madness just to stay with him."

"And if you were the one who lost your way?" She didn't have a voice he could hear, but he could share her thoughts.

Adamaï smiled ruefully. "He would die with me."

"And you would be together. In madness or in death."

"But how are you together? He's in another dimension."

"We share captivity. Neither Shinonome nor Qilby are free, and in that we are one."

Adamaï looked down at the world. Or up at it. "He's never going to forget it," he said. "Actually, neither are you. Goddess, I don't know which is worse."

"He is the brother of Shinonome," she explained. "Shinonome had to save him, no matter the cost. That is the meaning of the sibling bond."

"Is it?" he asked. "I don't know. I never met Yugo until a few months ago, but my whole life I knew I would. I would think about it all day long, about what it would be like to have a little Eliatrope brother to look after. When I did meet him, yeah, he was bigger than me, but I was still stronger. I was raised by Grougaloragran himself, and I knew  _who we were_  and what we were supposed to do.

"Only, I wasn't. We'd end up fighting for our lives and for the fate of the world, and I'd be the first to fall. I would always be looking out for him, and he'd end up saving me. Sometimes it's like...I don't know. I get the feeling sometimes that I need him more than he needs me."

"And do you need yourself, Adamaï?"

"What do you mean?" he asked. "I don't need myself. I am myself."

"It is the challenge of the proud to be a part of something great. Before you hatched, Shinonome knew you. You need no servant, and can suffer no master. Your brother is not greater than you, nor is he less, nor do you need him to be. He is incomplete. You must be what he is not because the day will come when you must do what he cannot."

Adamaï thought about his brother's strengths, and his own strengths. He thought about his brother's weaknesses and, with more difficulty, his own. He thought about Shinonome, facing her brother and shutting down his hopes and ambitions, even his freedom as well as her own. Then he looked down at the main world where several children were organizing a team sport, or maybe he looked up to it, or maybe he just looked across to it.

And he began to understand.

 

WWW

Amalia couldn't wrap her head around Emrub. There were over ten thousand people in the little world, and only one clothes store, and it only sold hats. Amalia knew more than anyone how to manage a state, and any community needed a balance between residence, industry, and commerce, and there was no way that one hat shop could supply everyone.

Of course, in the whole time she was there, she hadn't found anywhere someone could eat, sleep, or use the bathroom, so maybe Emrub was just weird. Well, she knew it was weird, but at least it was consistently weird.

"Yes, it's green, but it's not the  _right_  green," she said, trying on a long, bow meow eared hat in front of a mirror. "No, I changed my mind. What do you have in brown?"

"I have a selection of browns for you," the Eliatrope shopkeeper said. "Also, there is a changing stall in the corner for your convenience."

"I'll keep that in mind," Amalia said. As if she needed a changing stall to take a hat off. She picked up a brown hat—not a dirty brown, a rich, healthy brown. The price tag had the number forty five on it. "Forty five what?" she asked. "Kamas?"

"Original thoughts," the Eliatrope, Rettah, replied. She looked to be maybe ten, far too be running her own business. She wore black pants with a white shirt, and had a black and white striped hat. Amalia could imagine her sixty years later living alone with too many bow meows. "I also accept forgotten dreams."

"Oh," she said. "I think I'll just try it on." It looked good on her, but so did her hair. She needed a hat that looked good, but wasn't so long. "How many hats do you have, anyway?"

"Including the ones in storage?" Rettah zapped to a book at the front of the room. She didn't jump through the portal like Yugo did, she just walked through. "One million, two hundred fifty six thousand, four hundred and six."

"Wow, that's...quite a bit."

Rettah didn't move from the book. "I made each one," she said softly.

"You must have a lot of time on your hands," Amalia noted. "Do you have any other...styles? Not different colors, but..."

"Do you know how long that takes?" Rettah asked. "One million, two hundred fifty six thousand, four hundred and six. Do you  _know_  how long that  _takes_?"

Amalia put the hat back on its shelf and started to understand why no one else was shopping there. "You know what, this is a bit outside my price range, but thanks for everything."

"I have to get out of here."

"Yeah, some fresh air might do you good," Amalia agreed. "I think I saw Ruel organizing a Boufbowl game, maybe you should..."

"No, not this place, this world! This everything! It has been now for far too long, a single moment, stretched and torn across infinity. Not even Balthazar can sustain that. If the king does not deliver us before Dragon Break..."

"Yeah, if you're waiting for Qilby to free you," Amalia said, edging towards the exit, "you're going to be waiting a long time."

Rettah's head turned toward her slowly. The whole time she had been there, Amalia had never seen her blink. "Why speak you of the Traitor's name? We have no king but Yugo."

 

WWW

"GOOOOOAAAAAALLLLL!"

Yugo watched as Lyren broke through Ruel's defense and scored for the Black Nivlacs against the Orange Sebbohs. If Yugo knew more about Eliatrope culture, he might have recognized those terms. Probably animals from the Eliatrope home world.

Ruel laughed and congratulated the opposing team. During official matches, Ruel wanted points like he wanted Kamas, but in friendly games, he just liked playing.

Balthazar floated behind Yugo on his cushion. At first, Balthazar watched just in case someone got hurt—it  _was_  Boufbowl, after all—but now Yugo thought he just watched because he enjoyed the game. And of course to supervise Yugo's training.

They never found anything they could use as a ball. The only thing that was close to the right shape and size was Shinonome's Dofus, and no one had even suggested that. So if they couldn't find a ball, they decided to make one. Yugo had borrowed the Eliacube and gave the kids a Wakfu ball to play with.

Part of him wanted to join the game instead of just supplying the equipment and watching, but he felt like they'd feel more comfortable with him at a distance.

"Yugo!" Amalia called. "There you are." She sat down on the grass next to him. "Who's winning?"

"No one," he replied. "No one's keeping score."

"Ah." She paused. "So I talked to that Rettah girl at her hat shop."

"The Mad Hatter?"

"Yeah, definitely. Wait, you call her that too?" She couldn't disagree that the name fit, but it seemed mean by Yugo's standards.

"It's not an insult. Not just anyone can go crazy here. It's a mark of a strong mind."

"So...she's just smarter than everyone?"

"She keeps track of time. Balthazar can shield everyone's minds so this place still seems fresh and new, but when people start recording things, they start getting anxious." He smiled ruefully. "That's why we don't keep score. People might get nervous if they they looked up from a game and saw a four digit scoreboard."

"Four digit...Yugo, how long have we  _been_ here?"

He looked at her. "Do you really want to know?"

"Yes, I want to know. If we get back and find out that Armand already became king..."

"Not that long," Yugo insisted. He looked around to see if anyone was listening and lowered his voice. "Ruel's team is winning by three hundred points."

" _Three hundred—"_  Yugo gave her a sharp look. "Three hundred points?" she whispered. "I thought we've only been here a day!"

"It's a lot to take in, I know. I'm sorry for not warning you about Rettah. Balthazar asked me if I thought it would be best to, I don't know, destroy her hats or something, but I'm hoping that they won't be here much longer. Ideally, her friends would get her out of her shop and give her something else to do besides making hats, but it's hard to get people here to take things seriously."

"Huh," Amalia said as the situation sank in. "I was wondering why she said you were a king."

On the Boufbowl field, the ball vanished, and the Orange Sebbohs crashed into the Black Nivlacs. They fell into a pile of thrashing limbs squirming for a ball that was no longer there.

"What happened?" one of the players asked.

"The ball. Kala had it a second ago."

"I  _did_  have it. Then it just disappeared."

"Did you zap the ball?"

"No, I did  _not_  zap the ball."

"Because that's cheating. There's no zapping in Boufbowl. Right, Ruel?"

"I didn't zap it! This time."

"Sorry!" Yugo called out. "I, uh..."

"It's halftime," Ruel interrupted. "Everyone, take five."

"Five what?"

"I don't care, anything! Just take five of them."

"Oh, Sadida," Amalia whispered, looking at Yugo. He was cursed with the poker face of an honest man. "It's true, isn't it? You are a king!"

"Hello, all," Ruel said, approaching them. "So, what are we talking about?"

"Did you know about this?" she demanded, turning on Ruel.

"Yes."

"Wait, you did?"

"Probably. What exactly is it?"

"Yugo's the king!"

"You mean officially? Good job, kid. I figured you were, but I assumed it was one of those, 'In all but name' things."

"It's more complicated than that," Yugo insisted. Where was Adamaï when he needed him? He'd know how to explain it. No, on second thought, Adamaï would make it sound like Yugo was a God Emperor instead.

"How is it complicated?" Amalia asked. "Do you have any idea how much easier this makes things? I would have asked you to fake it if I thought you'd go along with it."

"Yes, but I'm not really a king," Yugo explained. "You can't be a king without a kingdom, right?"

Ruel looked around. "So, a few small planets aren't enough for you?"

"Those are outside reality. They don't count." He was explaining this poorly. "When I'm king, I'll have to take care of everything, and I'm not ready for that yet."

Amalia laughed abruptly. "That's not what being a king means. My dad's a king, and you know what he says about being a king?" She dropped her voice an octave in imitation of King Oakheart. "'I'm the king, and that means whatever I say it means.' And then he goes and eats a giant sandwich."

"Yes, but your kingdom has children who have parents, they have traditions that they're used to. You're dad has a status quo that he can maintain. I don't even have that, and I only have one chance to set one up. It's a lot of responsibility, and...and I'm terrified."

_I'm terrified._

He had never admitted that, not even to himself, but now that he did...well, his inner demons didn't run away, but finally he could look them in the eye.

"Well, that's a first," Ruel said. "Though, not that I know a lot about running a kingdom, I was only a mayor for one term, but maybe it's better to be more cautious with the lives of thousands of subjects than with your own life. And besides, you already saved the world twice, well, Nox might have stopped after taking out the Tree of Life, but Qilby, certainly."

"I didn't defeat Qilby," Yugo said. "And I didn't defeat Nox either. He killed me, and went back in time far enough to bring me back. Qilby was toying with me the entire time, and lost to Shinonome, not me."

Amalia and Ruel looked at each other. "Well, what does beating people up have to do with ruling a kingdom?" she asked. "You're an Eliatrope, not an Iop. Besides, that's what armies are for."

"Look, I'm not saying that I'll  _never_  be king, I'm just saying that I'm not ready  _yet_. Even Balthazar says that it will be a while before I can be king."

"Balthazar did not say that," the dragon said softly from his floating cushion. "There is a role your people need you to fulfill require wisdom and understanding that you have not yet gained. But the limits to your abilities do not limit who you are. You are not ready to lead us, Yugo, but you have always been our king."

Yugo looked up at the old, wise dragon and at his friends, who had always stood with him. He looked up at the specks and ribbons of light, his people weaving their magic in the sky.

And he began to understand.

"See, that's what I've always been trying to tell him," Adamaï said, fluttering down to them. "But he's always like, 'No, that's a bad idea. I know what I'm doing. I mean, I clearly have no idea what I'm doing, but trust me. I know what I'm doing.' Maybe you'd take my advice more if I started talking in the third person."

Yugo's face broke into a grin. "Hey, Ad. Where have you been this whole time?"

"Chatting with Shino. You?"

"Boufbowl."

"I still need to play that sometime. It sounds wonderfully violent. So, are we ready to move on or what?"

Yugo took another look at his people in the distance. He had wanted to bring his friends here even though there were easier ways to get Ruel out of jail. Without completely understanding it, he had needed to confront something. And he had.

"Yeah," he said with a smile. "We're ready to move on."

 

WWW

The Eliatropes had gathered around Balthazar's portal to see them off. Their hopes and dreams didn't seem as overwhelming as they once had. They stepped into the Blank Dimension and waited for the next portal to open up.

"So the next portal will take us back to my prison cell?" Ruel asked.

"That's the plan," Adamaï replied.

"And Balthazar couldn't make it, I don't know, appear outside the cell instead?"

"It's complicated," Yugo explained. "Balthazar is doing this from another dimension, so he needs a signal to latch onto. He could take us to Phaeris or Grougal, no problem, but without  _someone_ , he's just reopening the portal we first came through."

Amalia looked around nervously. "Do you think he'll show up again?"

"Qilby?" Yugo shrugged. "It's a big place, so not always."

She frowned. "So, how long are you going to leave him here?"

"There's not really much else we can do with the Traitor," Adamaï said. "I mean, we could move him to Emrub after everyone else leaves, but I doubt that would make much of a difference. Sometimes I think it would be better just to kill him. It wouldn't change his situation much, but after he returns to his Dofus, Shinonome can hatch."

"Then what do we do with baby Qilby?" Yugo asked.

"We banish him again, just like before, or we kill him and send him back to his Dofus. I didn't bring it up because I didn't think you'd like the idea of killing babies."

"No," Yugo agreed. "No I do not."

"And after a few generations of that, we might let him go and then he'd try to kill everyone again, only then he'd be justified," Adamaï mused. "I thought that maybe after we fill the world with Eliatropes who know better than to trust him, we could let him back in the World of Twelve, but we'd have to cut off his other arm just to be safe, and even then he might find a way to lick the Eliacube, and then we're back in the same situation."

Yugo frowned. "I noticed your ideas tend to be a bit..."

"Draconic?" he suggested.

"Have any of you heard of the fruit of Aisenma?" Amalia asked suddenly.

"Aisenma?" Yugo shook his head.

"It's one of the four Trees of Death to counterbalance the Tree of Life," she explained. "They'd make whoever ate their fruit do stuff like grow old, go berserk, or go mad with hunger. I'm not an expert on ancient Sadida lore, but I'm told that the fruit of Aisenma could make you lose your memory."

Yugo looked up quickly. "Really? Does your kingdom have any?"

"No. It's a divine weed of doom. We destroy it whenever we find it. There haven't been any sightings since the Ogrest. You know what? Forget I said anything. I shouldn't have brought it up."

"It probably wouldn't have worked anyway," Adamaï said. "If dying doesn't make him forget, I don't think a death fruit would. Besides, knowing Qilby, he might pretend to lose his memory for a few decades just so we'd let our guard down."

"We could test it on Shinonome," Yugo suggested quickly. "You know she wouldn't try to trick us. Adamaï, if this works, we wouldn't just be able to free Qilby, we'd be able to  _save_  him!"

The portal opened into the World of Twelve. Yugo made a note to stay alert for rumors about Aisenma.  _After all,_  he thought,  _what kind of king would I be if I can't even save a single, desperate soul?_  He dropped a flower he had plucked from Emrub onto the white, empty realm, and stepped through the portal.

And onto a pile of gold.

Around the pile of gold, Yugo saw more piles of gold, and under the piles of gold, Yugo suspected that there was a mountain of gold. They were in a massive stone room that made Grougaloragran's horde look like pocket change.

"Enutrof's  _purse_ ," Ruel whispered, his face a mixture of shock and rapture. He gasped for breath, clutched at his heart, and fell over.

"Ruel?" Yugo asked hesitantly.

Amalia sighed in annoyance. "Seriously, Ruel? We're going to do this now?"

"What's going on?" Adamaï asked.

"Ruel's faking a heart attack again," she explained.

"I don't think he's faking it," Yugo said.

"Oh, come on, Yugo. How gullible can you be? How many times has he pretended to have a heart attack, and how many times has he actually had one?"

"Yeah, but all those times, my dad wanted him to pay his bill! No one's making him pay for anything!"

Amalia looked at Ruel's prone figure, starting to worry. "You may be right." She picked up a handful of Kamas and threw them at him.

"What are you doing?"

"If there's anything that can bring that old skinflint back, it's gold."

"Oh, right." He picked up a handful and threw it too. The coins bounced off his old friend, but Ruel didn't move. "Amalia, this isn't working! Do you know the kiss of life?"

"Yeah, I think so—I mean, no,  _no_ , definitely not, no way."

"He might  _die_!"

"He's lived a good life," Amalia replied. "Besides, there's no way he'd rather go than on top of several thousand tons of gold."

"The kiss of life?" Adamaï snorted. "Out of my way."

"Wait, do you know how to do it?"

Adamaï rolled his eyes as he approached Ruel. "The kiss of life is for amateurs and romantics. I'm a dragon." He rubbed his hands together until electricity arced between them. "Clear!" he shouted, slamming his hands onto Ruel's chest. Ruel jerked upright, gasping for breath, and looked around.

"Enutrof's purse," he said.

"You already said that," Amalia said. "And don't die again. We're...still not sure where we are."

"No, that's where we are! We've died and gone to Enutrof's purse!"

"That's your afterlife, Ruel, not mine," Amalia replied. "If we died, I should be in Sadida's garden, not some underground pile of gold."

"And Yugo and I should have returned to our Dofus." Adamaï shook his head. "We should be back in that prison cell, but..."

"Although, that was an awfully small cell," Yugo said. "It could barely fit the first time, so maybe that threw off the portal and Balthazar sent us here instead."

"Yeah, but then we should have gone right outside the cell, not to the nearest pile of gold."

"Unless," Yugo said, and then he felt it. It came like a smell he couldn't place, like a song from some half remembered dream.

"I felt it too," Adamaï said, and they both darted toward the source. Yugo opened his eyes to the color of life and saw it lying there, abandoned in the horde like it was nothing more than gold.

It was round and about the size of Yugo's head, a rich, shimmering turquoise.  _Why send us_ here _? Balthazar would need something, a signal he could latch onto. Or some_ one.

Yugo knelt down in the gold and reverently put his hand on the lost Dofus of the Eliatrope hero Nora and her brother Efrim.

_I found you._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I thought about starting out this chapter with another Neverland quote, but I couldn't find any that fit, so I decided to plagiarize Tolkien instead. It's always a safe bet. This chapter is a bit longer than my usual ones, but I couldn't think of anywhere earlier to stop. Anyway, thank you to everyone who left reviews, and I apologize for taking so long. On a side note, I may or may not be receiving a book deal, so if I take an unseemly amount of time updating, it may or may not be because I'm writing something for money. Or I could just be lazy. There's always that too.


	12. Protect

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “I will protect those who cannot protect themselves.”  
> Brandon Sanderson, The Way of Kings

Wakfu

Worthy of the Crown

Chapter Twelve

Protect

“I will protect those who cannot protect themselves.”  
Brandon Sanderson, _The Way of Kings_

Ten thousand years ago, the world ended.  Orgonax descended with all his fury and the land grew sick with Stasis corruption.  The Eliatropes old enough to fight had fallen, and those young enough to be spared had fled.  That left only Nora and Efrim to stop Orgonax, and somehow they did.

“At least that’s what I think happened,” Yugo said.  “I had to piece the story together from what I heard from Phaeris and Balthazar.”

“But how did the egg get here?” Amalia asked, sitting on a pile of gold.

Yugo shrugged.  “Grougaloragran and Phaeris were able to keep track of some of the Dofus, but some of them have been lost since Ogrest’s Chaos.  As for how the Turquoise Dofus got here, I don’t even know where _here_ is.”

“Balthazar was aiming at the prison cell,” Adamaï said.  “But if he missed, then we can’t be far.”

“Good point,” Yugo said.  “So where in the Enutrof Kingdom would you find several miles of gold?  Ruel?”

Ruel stuck his head up out of a pile of gold.  “Hello, friends,” he said dreamily.  “It’s nice here.”

“Do you know where we are?”

“Somewhere nice.”

“Focus, Ruel,” Amalia said.  “Think, who is the richest man in the Enutrof Kingdom, and where does he keep his gold?”

“King Enitalp,” he said reflexively.  “Location, the royal treasury.  Estimated net worth...”  He looked around.  “Actually, about this much.”

“So instead of breaking out of a prison, we have to break out of a treasury,” Adamaï mused.  “That shouldn’t be too hard.”

“I don’t know,” Yugo said hesitantly.  “If King Enitalp guards his gold like Ruel did...”

“Oh, good point,” Amalia said.  “But maybe they’re only designed to keep people out instead of in?”

“What are?” Adamaï asked.

“Booby traps,” Yugo replied.  “Ruel’s vault was filled with them.  They’re little clicks followed by pain.  Lots of pain.”

“Maybe we could leave through Emrub?” Amalia asked.

Yugo shook his head.  “There’s too much interference.  Balthazar just opened up a portal here, so he won’t even be able to hear us until the background noise dies down.”

“What noise?” she asked in confusion.  “I can’t hear...you know what?  If you ever what to say, ‘It’s too complicated,’ I’ll take your word for it.”  She turned to Ruel.  “Hey, Ruel, how well can you navigate the traps to get us out of here?”

“Get out of here?” he asked.  “Why would you want to leave?”

“A lot of reasons, which I’ll explain to you when you’re not drunk on wealth.”

“Well, sure, I can walk you out,” Ruel said.  “Let me just...find my pants.”

Ruel’s head sank down into the treasure and Amalia’s face screwed up in disgust.  “ _Eeew!_  I did not need that mental image.  The one thing you share, Ruel, is the last thing you should ever, _ever_ share!”

“What’s the big deal?” Adamaï asked.  “I never wear pants.”

Amalia looked at him with contempt.  “Never say that again.  Just, don’t.”

Ruel climbed out of the gold.  “Okay, I’m ready.”  They found a massive double door made entirely of gold, and with a great deal of effort and Adamaï transforming into a Crackler, they pulled it open.  As the others started to leave, Ruel turned back to the treasure and grew misty eyed.  “Don’t worry, little ones.  Daddy’s going to be right back.”

“You are?” Yugo asked, carrying the Turquoise Dofus in both hands.  “Aren’t you coming with us?”

Ruel looked away awkwardly and followed them out.  “Well, I’ll walk you out.”

“And then?”

“Well, I’m sure you lot will do just fine without an old Enutrof like me slowing you down.”

“What are you talking about?  You’ve never slowed us down before.”

“Ducked out of trouble, sometimes,” Amalia pointed out, holding up a glowing mushroom for light in the dark tunnels out of the treasury.  “But slowed us down?  Never.”

“That’s because I’ve never had to carry several thousand tons of gold before.  But now I’ll have to find a safe place to store it, and since that gutless, soulless, spineless king seized my other vault—”

_Click!_

Amalia looked down where a stone sank too far down beneath her foot.  “It wasn’t me, I swear!”

“Look out!”

A massive shovel with a blade six feet wide swung down to where Amalia had stood throwing up splinters of stone.  Then murder holes in the walls shot out a volley of arrows and a bucket of oil fell from the ceiling, followed by a single match.

“Well, how about that,” Adamaï said, being the only one who didn’t get out of the way.  “I’m on fire.”

“You okay, bro?” Yugo asked.

“I have pretty thick skin.”

“What the heck, Ruel?” Amalia demanded, turning on the old man.

“What?  How was that _my_ fault?”

“You were supposed to be looking for traps!  That was the whole reason we brought you here!”

“You know, I almost forgot how much I missed traveling with you.  And here I thought you brougth me because you enjoy my company.”

“That’s why Yugo brought you.   _I_ wanted you to check for traps.”

“ _I_ was distracted by an in depth and heart to heart conversation with my favorite little Eliatrope.  What’s your excuse?”

“Hey, not to interrupt,” Yugo started, “but do you think anyone heard that?”

“Of course not,” Ruel replied.  “These walls must be a thousand feet thick.”

“Oh,” Yugo said, relieved.  “That’s good.”

“Now, if I were in charge, I’d install a silent alarm to go off when any of the traps did.”

“Oh,” Yugo said again.  “That’s bad.”

“Hold on,” Amalia said suddenly.  “I have an idea.”

“What, again?” Adamaï asked with irritation.  

“Ruel, will they send guards down here after us, or wait for us at the entrance?”

Ruel frowned thoughtfully.  “If we were the usual treasure hunters and got all the way to the treasury and only triggered one trap, then they’d think we had another way of getting in, so they’d have to come after us.”

“Perfect!  When the guards get here, we’ll beat them up, take their clothes, and walk out disguised as Enutrofs.”

“Yeah!” Yugo said enthusiastically.  “It will be just like when we saved Pinpin from the ugly princesses!”

“One day, you’re going to have to tell me these stories, bro,” Adamaï said.  

“Hold on,” Ruel said.  “Now, if we have Yugo stand on Adamaï’s shoulders, and we give you a helmet or something to cover up your green hair...then you still won’t look a thing like Enutrofs!”

Amalia rolled her eyes.  “Look, if we can trick people into thinking that _you’re_ a princess, we can pass ourselves off as Enutrofs.”

It was a few more minutes before anyone came.  The four of them went back down the tunnel where the ground was free of traps and were waiting when they heard footsteps.

“You know,” Yugo whispered, “I know it’s hard to tell by the sound with how much everything echoes down here, but how many guards do you think they’ll send?”

A large, round Enutrof stepped into view.  He had a golden shovel, a snarling, white phorror, and an army.  

“Ah, nuts,” Yugo said, recognizing him.  It was the king himself, come personally to investigate the burglary.

“Ruel?” the Enutrof king gasped.  “Ruel Stroud?”

“Your Majesty,” Ruel sneered with a mocking bow.  

“I thought you left weeks ago.  How many times am I going to have to arrange your execution?”

“Until you stop trying to execute me,” Ruel replied.  “In the mean time, Enitalp, I want my gold back, my bag, and my _shovel_!”

“And I want you dead!”

“Enough!” Yugo shouted.  Ruel and the king, Enitalp, looked at him, and he realized that he needed to say something else.  “Why don’t we...talk this through?  I’m sure we can find a solution that satisfies everyone.”

Enitalp’s eyes grew wide and he pointed a finger at Yugo, shaking in fury.  “You!  That’s my egg!  You’ve been in my treasury, haven’t you, you little cretin!”

“First of all,” Adamaï interrupted, “that’s not a cretin, that’s my brother.  Knowing the difference could save your life.  Very soon.  Second of all, that’s not an egg, it’s a Dofus, and the only people it belongs to are the ones inside of it.  Lastly, if you think you can arrest _me_ again just because you have an army with you, then you will not burn, little Enutrof, _you will melt_.”

Yugo was losing control of the situation.  He never _had_ control, and pretty soon everyone was going to start killing each other.   _You’re not just a wandering hero anymore,_ he thought.   _You’re a king.  Your choices decide the fate of your kingdom._

The Eliatrope people didn’t need any more enemies, and he didn’t have enough Kamas to buy his way out of a conflict.  He might try to promise to pay Enitalp back in the future, but considering the interest rates he would accept, being in debt to the Enutrof kingdom might be as bad as being in a war with them.

“The Dofus,” he said quickly, stalling for time more than anything.  “Why do you have one anyway?”

“Why?” Enitalp repeated with contempt.  “I have one because of the most ancient and noble of Enutrof laws, that of _finders_ becoming _keepers_.”

“So you weren’t entrusted with it?”  Considering how Grougaloragran had found a line of Osamodas to watch over his Dofus…but no. 

“Entrusted?” Enitalp sputtered.  His face had grown red with rage.  It would have been comical if he didn’t have an army with him.  “I knew this would happen!  You’re thieves, the lot of you!  I knew you Eliatropes would be trouble, ever since your king had his meeting.”

“My king?”  Yugo shook his head.  “Qilby was many things. He was a traitor, insane, and most of all, alone, but he was not my king.  I am.”

Enitalp blinked.  “What?  But Qilby—”

“Qilby lied,” Yugo said.  “I had to leave him somewhere horrible.  But I have my position confirmed by the inhabitants of Emrub and the dragon they call Phaeris the Powerful.  And that means that I’m going to save everyone.”

Enitalp stood in silence for a moment, and he seemed to grow surprised and even a little frightened, but when he spoke, his voice dripped with sarcasm.  “Well, your _Majesty_ , I might be persuaded to let you take the old scoundrel, assuming I never see him again.  Banishing is cheaper than executing anyway, but there is no bribe or threat that will make me part with the dragon egg.”

“What’s the big deal about the Dofus anyway?” Amalia asked.  “Why should it be so important to you?”

“Why?” Enitalp repeated incredulously.  “What good is a kingdom sitting on the largest lead mine in the World of Twelve without that egg to turn it into gold?”

“It can turn lead into gold?” Ruel asked.  He looked at the Dofus in Yugo’s arms.  “How interesting.”

“So you’ve been draining their Wakfu to make _gold_?” Adamaï demanded.  “How long have you been doing this?”  Flame burst out between his teeth with each word.  “How long have you been _eating_ them?”

The king’s phorror growled protectively, but Enitalp took a step back.  “That’s not the term I’d use...”

“And if you think that we’d _let_ you suck out their life to slake your greed, you’re not just a dumb Enutrof, you’re a dead one.”

Yugo looked down at the Turquoise Dofus in his arms.  He hadn’t noticed it before, but compared to the vibrancy that Chibi and Grougal had shown before they hatched, Nora and Efrim seemed...ill.  Yugo had grown up hearing stories of people who had gathered Dofus for their power, including the Ogrest who, with all six, could challenge the gods themselves.  

But taken from the other perspective, what would it be like to be trapped between death and rebirth, having your Wakfu ripped from you each time you seemed about to hatch?  You wouldn’t even be a slave, you’d be a tool, a weapon.  Fuel.

“I refuse to be insulted in my own kingdom by a band of thieves,” he growled.  He turned to his men.  “Guards, arrest them if you can.  If you can’t, well, one of them already skipped his execution twice already, and Oakheart’s daughter isn’t supposed to be here anyway.”

“No one dies today,” Yugo said firmly.

“What?” Adamaï protested.  “But—”

“I said that I was going to save everyone, and that means everyone.”

The dragon sighed in frustration.  “Fine, fine.  It’s your kingdom.”

Someone like Pinpin might have been thrilled for the fight Yugo faced, but this was his first time not just being in a war, but starting one.  He handed the Dofus to Amalia, hoping that she wouldn’t be too impeded having to fight one handed.  

Then he drew a portal.

It went from right between him and Adamaï to the middle of Enitalp’s men.  They both jumped through it, and Yugo dropped out the other side as Adamaï flew straight up.  As the Enutrofs turned on him, Adamaï let out a blast of fire on his position.  Yugo caught the core of the flame in another portal as the rest fanned out against the Enutofs, knocking them back.  

Yugo was close to Enitalp, so he opened up another portal at the king, releasing Adamaï’s dragon fire.  Enitalp tapped the floor with his shovel and blocked the attack with a wall of jagged stone.  The king’s phorror jumped over the wall and leaped toward Yugo with his teeth bared, but Adamaï tackled the animal from the side, rolling with him into the ground.  

“If you want to eat someone,” he growled, growing several times his size as his flesh turned to stone, “EAT ME!”

Enitalp jumped over his barrier in the distraction, not to flee, but to cut Yugo down with his shovel.  Yugo looked up and saw him, the man’s face contorted with the rage Enutrofs saved for those who dared rob them of their treasure, but Ruel caught the weapon in mid swing.  

“You owe me a shovel,” Ruel hissed.

Enitalp tried to wrestle back his weapon, but Adamaï as a massive Crackler came stomping through, trying to pry off the phorror, and the king had to release the shovel and jump out of the way to avoid being crushed.  

Enitalp went behind his men for cover, moving unnaturally fast for a man of his size.  His soldiers formed a line around their king, pointed their shovels at their enemies, and though they didn’t seem enthusiastic about the idea of charging a dragon, neither did they run.  

Enitalp glared at Ruel over the shoulders of his men as he caught his breath.  “You’ve dug your own grave, Ruel.”

“Well, good,” he replied, twirling the king’s shovel around, testing its weight.  “I wouldn’t want to waste Kamas paying someone to dig it for me, now would I?”

Adamaï managed to pry the phorror off of him, and he flung him against a wall.  The stone cracked on impact, and the phorror didn’t rise.  “Man, those things are frustrating,” he growled.  “It’s like fighting a giant tick.”

Enitalp looked at his fallen familiar.  “My...what have you _done_?” he whispered, his hands shaking as his eyes watered.  “You’ll pay!  You’ll all _pay_!”  He struck his palm against the ground and the earth shook.  Yugo thought that Enitalp was going to bring the entire tunnel down on them, but instead the stone floor itself opened up.  A massive mechanical drill rose out of the ground, spewing out chips of rock, and buried itself in Adamaï’s chest.

“Adamaï!”

Adamaï fell on his back with a deafening crack as his stone body crashed against stone floor.  The drill head sprayed the dragon’s violet blood, but Adamaï held it at bay and flung it aside.  

Yugo looked at the ground in panic and turned on his Wakfu vision, cursing himself for not checking sooner.  A second drill swam through the stone like a shark through water, but when it breached the surface, Yugo was ready for it.

“STAY AWAY FROM HIM!” he bellowed, blasting the drill in midair with a beam of Wakfu.  The drill hit the ground and fell to pieces.  Yugo saw a third drill, still in the ground.  He aimed another beam at it, cutting through stone and destroying the drill head of the machine.

“Those were my drills,” Ruel whispered.  “I patented those designs, dang it!  Where are my blasted royalties?”

Yugo zaapped to his brother’s side.  Adamaï had shrunk down to his normal size.  His chest still bled freely.  “Are you okay?”  Dumb question.  This close, Yugo could feel Adamaï’s pain as if it were his own, and while Adamaï wasn’t suffering as much as when he was possessed by Anathar, he was definitely not okay.

“I’m okay,” he wheezed.  “Phaeris never would have fallen for that, though.  I’m getting clumsy.”

Yugo turned to Ruel.  “We need to get out of here.”  _And find an Eniripsa._

“The coward’s way out is the road more traveled by for a reason,” Ruel agreed.  He scooped up the dragon, careful not to let his wound touch his clothes—Adamaï didn’t need an infection—and he ran back toward the treasury.  Amalia, who had taken cover in a green dome, joined him, Dofus in hand.

Yugo stayed behind.  He didn’t know why, maybe they didn’t want to fight a boy who could burn through stone, or maybe they knew that they wouldn’t get paid if they died, but even after Adamaï fell, the Enutrofs did not attack.  “King Enitalp of the Enutrof Kingdom,” Yugo called.  “Your phorror is alive; I can see his Wakfu still inside of him.  You should take him to be seen to.  Or you can chase us.  The choice is yours.”

Yugo raised his arms and blasted a hole through the top of the tunnel, and with the rain of falling rocks to cover his retreat, he too ran.

When he reached the treasury, Amalia was waiting at the door.  “Good, you came back,” she said.  She shut the door after him and tied it closed with summoned vines.  “I was starting to worry that you stayed behind to do something incredibly stupid.”

“You mean like start a war?”

She rolled her eyes.  “Please.  If anything, he started it.  In fact, if taking Norim and Efra’s Dofus counts as kidnapping...”

“Nora and Efrim,” he corrected.

“That’s what I said, but it won’t matter if we don’t find a way out of here.”

“Right.”  He turned to Ruel who was shoveling gold into a bag.  “How long will it take for them to break through that door?”

“Do they have any drills left?”

Yugo had destroyed two of them, but did Adamaï destroy the first one, or did he just roll it over?  “Let’s be optimistic and say no.”

“Ten minutes, tops.”

Something crashed against the door, stretching Amalia’s vines.

“Make that five.”

Yugo turned to Adamaï.  He was lying stiffly in a pile of gold, breathing heavily with his eyes half closed.  “How are you doing?”

“Pretty good.  Is it time for round two?”

“Pretty good?” Amalia repeated.  “There’s a hole in your chest!  I can see your heart beating!”

“No you can’t.  Can you?”  He looked down.  “That’s just a lung.”

“And that makes it okay?”

“I got a spare.”

“I can still see your ribs.  Do you have something to wrap that up with?  Because even if it isn’t fatal, it’s still really disgusting.”

“It’s ironic that I’m the one with a gaping wound in my chest, and I’m still complaining less than you are.”

Yugo could tell that Adamaï was lying to make him feel better, but he just hoped that his brother would hold on long enough to find help.  Adamaï’s Wakfu, at least, was still strong.  He tried not to think about how strong Pinpin’s Wakfu was before he died.  “Maybe we could bury ourselves,” Yugo suggested.  “If we wait long enough, maybe they’ll think we found another way out and we can escape when they let their guard down.”

“Won’t work,” Ruel replied, still shoveling gold into his bag.  “If we’re in his gold, Enitalp will know exactly where we are.  Enutrof treasure sense.”

Well, they didn’t have time to hide anyway.  Yugo watched Ruel work.  “Wait, where did you get that bag from?”

“I borrowed it from the king right after he lent me his shovel.”

“Really?” Amalia asked.  “And it took you how long to rob him blind?”

“I didn’t rob him blind,” Ruel said distractedly.  “Why would I?  None of my friends buy eyeballs anymore.”

“Is there anything in there we can use?” Yugo asked urgently.  “Your old bag had some recall potions.”

“Won’t work.  Havensack security.  It will take a few days to crack it.  I can put gold in, but if a person tries to get in, it might spit you out, it might chew you up, it might do anything.”

“We have to do something!” Yugo insisted.  “You know, besides a heroic last stand.”  Whatever was on the other side of the door continued to beat it like a slow drum, warping the metal.

Ruel finished filling his bag.  “How far can you throw a portal?”

“A hundred feet, about.”

“That’s what’s comfortable.  What’s your limit?”

“Two hundred?” he guessed.  “I don’t know.  It’s usually easier to make a few short portals than a long one.”

“You’ll need to put another zero on that number, because two hundred feet aren’t going to cut it.”

Yugo took a deep breath.  The last time he had thrown a portal as far as he could, he had passed out from exhaustion, and that wasn’t close to the distance that he needed.  But that was a long, long time ago.  He was stronger now.  He had to be.

He drew one end of a portal and threw the other end up through the ceiling of the treasury.  He liked to see where he was throwing, or at least know where he was opening a portal, but that was just to orientate himself.  He knew where the portal needed to go, just up.  

He pushed the portal as far as he could and fell to his knees.  The sudden depletion of Wakfu left his head buzzing.  “How’s that?”

Ruel tried to stick his shovel through, but it clinked against stone.  “You’ll have to do better than that.”

“But I can’t!  That’s as far as I can go!”

Adamaï rose to his feet.  His knees trembled, but he stood.  “Don’t be ridiculous.  You haven’t even tried.”

“Take it easy, bro.  You need to rest.”

“I’ve watched you fight, Yugo.  You always hang back, saving a bit of energy just in case you need it later in an emergency, but if you can still stand when you’re done, you haven’t ‘tried your best.’  You haven’t tried at all.”

“But—”

“And don’t you dare say that that’s as far as you can go.”  Blood dripped down his legs, leaving sticky footprints on the gold.  “Because you haven’t had my help yet.”

“Um, Adamaï?  I don’t want to sound pessimistic, but you’re dying.”

“This is an emergency.  If we don’t get out of here, we won’t have a later.”  He grinned weakly.  “Besides, I’m a dragon.  Dying is beneath me.”

The doors burst open and Enutrof guards poured in.  

“Now, Yugo!”

Yugo drew a circle in the air, putting every last drop of Wakfu he had into, and adding the dragon’s power to his own.  When he finished, he wasn’t just drained, he was empty, a cold, dry husk.  He fell forward, unable to stand, right into the portal.

And kept on falling.  

He felt sunlight on his skin, sunlight that he hadn’t seen in so long.  And fresh air, too, as it blew past him.  

“Yugo!”

He opened his eyes.  He saw Adamaï falling beside him.  He seemed unconscious, but content.  He looked up and saw Amalia, still carrying the Turquoise Dofus, and Ruel, with his borrowed bag and shovel.  They seemed concerned about something.

Yugo looked down, and saw how far away the ground was.   _Oh.  I must have overshot it a bit,_ he thought.   _Honest mistake._

“Do something!”

Do something?  He had already done something.  He was tired of doing something.  He wanted to do nothing for a while.  He’d do something later.  

Then it dawned on him that they were going to die.  And there was nothing he could do about it.

_Such defeatism._

Or was there?  He was a king, wasn’t?  Yes, he could save everyone, because _that’s what kings did_.  He realized that he had a little bit of Wakfu left.   _Better not tell Adamaï.  He’d get upset._  He drew one, last portal, and everything went black.

_There’s always a solution, kiddo, always._

WWW

Amalia had followed her friends into the portal because she thought that the intense nausea would be better than being killed by Enutrofs.  But instead of nausea, she was hit by a sense of vertigo and a sudden fear of heights.

Yugo’s portal hadn’t just brought them to the surface.  It had brought them to the clouds.  

The ground got closer and closer, but Yugo seemed delirious, and Adamaï was out entirely.  But then a portal opened up right under her, and for a moment she fell upward, then hit the ground.  She expected her friends to come through other portals, but they just kept falling.  

Amalia expected to start throwing up, but for the second time going through a portal, nothing happened.  Maybe she was just getting used to it, but all it meant was that she could watch her friends die without distraction.

_Out of all of us, he chose to save me first,_ she thought.   _He really does care about me._  Then she realized something.   _Idiot!  He didn’t save me because he cares!  He saved me because I can do this!_

She slammed her hands against the soft, fertile ground, and summed three soft-flowered plants.  The flowers caught her friends, breaking their fall.

Ruel climbed out of his flower, gasping for breath.  “Wow, that was—one second.”  He turned away and vomited heavily.  “That was close.”

“I know,” she said.  “But we’re safe.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And thus ends the most convoluted prison break you will ever read about. In this story. I think prison breaks have their own genre, if you’re interested, but the characters in those books can’t jump through other dimensions on their way out. 
> 
> Now, just because all my friends are doing it, as well as at least one complete stranger, there is a Wakfu kickstarter going on. It’s at—assuming that this website doesn’t eat the URL, https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1836563008/wakfu-the-animated-series. Or you can just google Wakfu kickstarter, if that’s easier to remember. At first it was to get the series in English, but they reached that goal in about two minutes, and now their working on number six. You can get everything on Blu-Ray for forty dollars, so if you like Wakfu and you have money, check it out.
> 
> I wanted to put in a Monte Python quote in here (Tis but a scratch.), but it didn’t seem to fit.


	13. Research

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?"  
> -Albert Einstein

Yugo woke up to the smell of flowers. He was lying in something soft.  _So tired._ What had happened? He remembered fighting Enutrofs, running... _Adamaï!_

But no, Adamaï was still alive. Yugo could still feel his Wakfu. Ruel, Amalia, they were all alive. If they weren't, there'd be a void he couldn't ignore. He was lying in a giant flower, Amalia had probably grown it for him. He tried to sit up and was hit by a sudden headache.

"Yugo!" Amalia was at his side. She seemed blurry before his eyes focused. "How are you feeling?"

"I have a bit of a headache, but that's it."

"Good," Amalia said, "but be more careful next time. You could have gotten yourself killed."

He smiled weakly. "Well, I do have a reputation to uphold."

"What do you mean?"

"Qilby said that I have the ability to give my life life for the most insignificant things." That sounded bad. "You know, like individual planets and stuff."

She gave him a flat look. "In the future, when you find yourself in a life or death situation, don't take the advice of a deranged maniac." She paused thoughtfully. "And that includes Pinpin."

Yugo looked around. They were in a forest somewhere, but he couldn't see anything he recognized. "Where are we?"

"Remember how the Enutrof Kingdom was built between the coast and the Etiryp Mountains?"

"Sort of."

"Well, apparently their king kept his treasury under one of those mountains, because their kingdom is just on the other side of that mountain range," she said, pointing.

"How's Adamaï?"

"About as expected. Upset about being injured, wants to get going, he asked about you the last time he woke up. He sleeps a lot, too, so that's a plus."

"And Ruel?"

"Oh, you know," Amalia replied. "Being Ruel."

WWW

Ruel lay in a ditch, pretending not to be there. Actually, he'd be pretty comfortable if he weren't being hunted.

"What do you mean, the tracks are gone? He was just here. He can't have disappeared."

"And yet they did a good job of that in the treasury."

"They had an Eliatrope with them. Did you see the Eliatrope? All I saw was the old man."

"And even that was only a glimpse."

"That's assuming that you could even see the Eliatrope. We have no proof that they can't turn invisible."

"We have no proof that they  _can't_  turn invisible? I'm going to assume they don't have any more special abilities until they prove otherwise."

"Because that method has been working out great so far."

"Toryn, you're not helping."

"He's Toryn. I'm Talon."

"Still not helping."

"So they can vanish like Xelors and hide like Srams? Fool's gold, what are we dealing with here?"

_Just me,_  Ruel thought with a smile.

"Well, we've tracked them this far. Toryn, you and Bolin head back and put this position on the map. We might be able to find a pattern eventually. Now for the rest of you, I'll need you five to fan out that way, and the rest of you go the other way. I'll be waiting right here if you see anything, and if you do, do not pursue. Come back and report immediately. Now go."

Ruel listened to the sound of marching feet and waited until the noise faded. Then he stood up, brushed off some of the dirt on his clothes, and approached the Enutrof soldier left behind.

"Stroud," the man said stiffly.

"Philip."

WWW

"How long have I been out?" Yugo asked.

"Not long," Amalia replied. "You seemed pretty tired, and we had to stay here anyway to get my doll and everything else we left behind, so it seemed better to let you sleep."

Yugo looked up at the sky through the trees. "I guess I'm not getting an alliance with the Enutrofs anytime soon."

Amalia started laughing. It wasn't a cheerful laugh, more of a glad-I'm-not-dead laugh. "Yeah, I guess not."

Yugo sighed. Sadida and Xelor were on his side, but New Sufokia and Enutrof weren't.  _But I got Ruel out of this,_  he thought.  _And Nora and Efrim's Dofus. Focus on that._  "I might come back here in a few years after everything's cooled down," he said. "For now, we need to move on. If Adamaï is okay, we'll leave as soon as Ruel gets back."

WWW

Ruel scanned the surroundings quickly for an ambush. Did Philip seem more nervous than usual?

"Did you bring a present?" The eagerness in the guard's voice didn't seem feigned. Ruel pulled out a small bag of Kamas and handed it to him. It hurt too much to let go, so Philip had to tear it from his grasp, but if Ruel let go too easily, Philip would suspect the coins were fake. He counted them anyway.

"Is this all?"

"That's what we agreed on," Ruel replied.

"I suppose. Although, his Majesty has increased your bounty again. And the Eliatrope's. And the dragon's. Maybe there should be another increase to balance them out?" He looked at Ruel's havensack meaningfully. It had taken Ruel two days to break through the bag's security.

"I'll take that into consideration," Ruel said, gripping his shovel.

Anyone who said that you couldn't buy honor with gold had never met an Enutrof. Mentally, Philip was predictable. Two people were offering him gold, and since he didn't want to pick one, he picked both. He'd help Ruel until he thought that the Kamas would stop coming, then he'd hand him over to the king. As long as he thought that Ruel would be back tomorrow with another bag of gold, he'd cooperate.

"There's a clearing to the east," Ruel said. "I'll leave a false trail for your men from there to the river a few miles south."

Ruel had been a bounty hunter for long enough to know that the ones who got away weren't the ones who hid or who fought, but the ones who mislead, sending the hunters on leads that lead nowhere as their own trail grew cold. Amalia had spent the last few days planting deadly seeds around where Yugo was resting just in case the Enitalp's men found them, but you survived every battle you didn't fight.

"You know, I should just arrest you. I am a loyal Enutrof, you know, and the king has been placing more and more value on such loyalty lately."

"You could get yourself killed for such loyalty," Ruel noted. "And even if you didn't, you'd lose half of the king's reward in taxes." Philip paused thoughtfully.  _Good, good, no one wants to pay taxes._  "Also, I can offer you something that the king can't."

"And that would be?"

"The gift of friendship."

Philip raised an eyebrow. "Friendship?" he replied skeptically. "What's that worth on the gold standard?"

"At the moment? Not much. But you could invest it, because the Eliatrope people cannot afford a king so violently opposed to them."

"And yet, we have an army. His Junior Majesty doesn't."

"He doesn't need one. Tell me, has New Sufokia sent a diplomat yet?"

Philip blinked. "How'd you know about that?"

"I'm clever. When you get the chance, ask him about the Crimson Claws. Ask him about the Sufokian navy that found a flood of invading demons and  _sent them back to Shukrute._  And then ask them about the dragon Phaeris, who stood in their way like ten thousand Shushus never could.

"In the treasury, your king saw children fight.  _I_  saw their champions, and I'd put my Kamas on a pair of wings that can blot out the sun over a few men with shovels any day. So, friendship, Philip. You might want to keep it."

Ruel turned to leave without looking back. Promises could be as effective as bribes, and they cost much less. Lies cost nothing at all. Hopefully Philip wouldn't be too skeptical, but even if Yugo was the kind of person to dispose of sovereign rulers to install puppet kings, the only thing Ruel would remember about Philip was that he was a cheap bribe.

Cheap? Ruel scowled. Even though the contents of his havensack were weightless, he could  _feel_ that there was less in there. Those kids had better appreciate what he was spending on their safety! Not that he'd tell them about it. Enutrof, no, he'd die before he let them know that he spent all day giving away Kamas. They might get the wrong idea, and he did have a reputation. But still, they had better be grateful.

WWW

Yugo was tell his old friend had returned before opening his eyes. The Enutrof had a very distinctive smell. "Ruel! You're back!"

"Hey, kid. How are you feeling?"

He sat up. He didn't get a headache this time. "A bit hungry, but mostly that I've been in bed for too long." Amalia tossed him a pear. "Oh, thank you."

"So you think you're ready to go to the next kingdom?"

Yugo nodded and bit into his pear. "Well, we can't stay here, but is this even helping? I mean, before, we were at least neutral with the New Sufokians and the Enutrofs, but I think I managed to start a war with both of them."

"I wouldn't worry too much about that. The Sufokians have their ships, but if you keep your people far enough away from the shore, they can't touch you. As for the Enutrof Kingdom, there's something that you need to understand about war." Ruel lowered his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. "It's expensive. There's the soldiers' pay, but also food, rations, equipment, supply lines, time of travel, logistics; even a quick war can cost a fortune."

"How do you know so much about war?" Amalia asked.

"I was a lieutenant in the skirmish against the Sacriers a few years back. In fact, it was because of my courage and valor on the battlefield that I got appointed mayor."

"You had courage and valor?" Amalia asked incredulously.

Ruel snorted derisively. "No, but I timed the retreat perfectly so there was no one left who could say that I didn't. Anyway, after you set up your kingdom, it will still be a few years before your people are old enough to fight, but until then, you have your alliance with the Sadidas, and several dragons, so even if Enitalp does choose to attack you, he'll need some help."

"So as long as I don't irritate any of the other kingdoms, I'll be fine?"

"Yes," Ruel admitted, "but that's not likely or necessary. Really, all you need is the help of one more kingdom."

"Which one?"

"Think about it. In the World of Twelve, what is the one kingdom that no one would ever attack?"

Yugo thought for a moment. "The Iops?" he guessed. They were the strongest warriors in the world—according to Tristepin, at least.

Ruel shook his head. "Their strong fighters, but the world is full of strong fighters. The Sacriers can hold their own, and even though Fecas aren't aggressive, they're tough."

"Well, the Cra have the best archers..."

"And the Osamodas and the Sadidas have the best summoners, and the Sram have the best spies and assassins. But there is so much more to war than just fighting."

"There's food," Yugo said. "But no one has a monopoly on food."

"No, but you're on the right track. What else does a war need? Think back to when Nox attacked the Sadidas."

Yugo frowned. Why that war? The war between the New Sufokians and the Shushus was more recent, but while Yugo entered both wars right when the fighting started, he stayed for the cleanup and recovery in the first. And man was there a lot of that! The fighting was over in less than a day, but they spent weeks trying to heal the land. "Healers!"

Ruel grinned. "Without enough Eniripsas to serve as medics, more people die from infected wounds and disease than on the battlefield. Get them to side with you, not just tolerate you, but side with you, and no one will be foolish enough to stand against you in war."

Yugo took a deep breath. He had made too many mistakes on his quest already, and he still didn't know what he could have done differently for most of them. He hadn't known what he was doing, and he jumped in anyway...but there was nothing he could do about that now. If Ruel was right about the Eniripsas...

Yugo got off his flower, fighting off the sudden vertigo, and found the flower that Adamaï was lying on. The dragon was on his side, snoring peacefully. Yugo put his hand on his shoulder and gently shook him.

"Wha? Whozzat?" Adamaï started, jumping out of his flower. "Yugo! You're up!"

"Hey, Ad." Yugo looked down at his brother's wound. "Yikes, what happened?"

Adamaï looked down. His wound that had once been oozing purple blood had turned green and more than a little bit fuzzy. "Um, I'm sure that's not nearly as infected as it looks." He touched his wound with his claw.

"Don't touch that!" Amalia ordered. "It's a bandage."

"A bandage? It looks like there's moss growing on me."

Amalia hesitated. "So?"

"Did you put this on me while I was asleep?"

"You were asleep for a long time."

"Did you draw on my face too?"

Amalia rolled her eyes. "She didn't," Yugo said. "Anyway, if you're feeling up to it, we're heading to the Eniripsa Kingdom."

Adamaï gave him a flat look. "Yugo, I'm  _fine_. It's just a scratch."

"No, we're not going to see the Eniripsa healers. We're going to talk to their queen."

WWW

Eniripsa was only a week away, and it was unlike anywhere Yugo had ever seen. The air wasn't as fresh as it was in Sadida, but it was much cleaner, and even the rare specks of dirt he found seemed sanitized. The buildings were far more colorful than Xelor or Enutrof, and while the other kingdoms they visited were populated predominantly by their own kind, Eniripsa had plenty of all kinds of different people.

"This is so cool!" Yugo said enthusiastically. He peered into the distance. "Is that the castle?" He zaaped into the air and back for a better view. "I can see the castle from here! I can't wait!"

"Yeah, well you're going to have to, kid," Ruel said. "It's time you started treating this mission less like a quest and more like a game."

"Like a...what?"

"Politics," Ruel explained, "is like Boufbowl. Cheating isn't just sport, it's noble. You need to fight dirty, spy on the enemy, take  _every advantage that you can._  Remember, Eniripsa is the championship match. We cannot afford to let the enemy score. Find out what matters to them. Save these people from certain doom even if you have to put them there yourself. Do whatever it takes so when you talk to the queen, you don't tell her what you want,  _she asks you_."

Yugo tried to swallow the metaphor. "So, how are they the enemy again?"

"Ruel's right," Amalia said for the first time ever. "We need to go shopping."

"What?" Ruel said. "How did you manage to get that from what I just said?"

"This kingdom is the one that matters most. We need to make a good impression." She turned to Yugo. "And that means talking to the queen  _not_  dressed like an adventurer."

"But I am an adventurer."

"Yes, but you're also a king, so you need to look like one."

"But I'm a king no matter what I look like, aren't I? I mean, you're still a princess even when you look..." Amalia gave him a sharp look, so he let the sentence die.

"People judge you by your appearance."

"They do? I mean, people like Vampyro, sure, but everyone?"

"Yes, and since you can't change that, you might as well use it." Amalia turned to Ruel. "Honestly, I'm not sure if it's even possible to make you look presentable, or if we should just leave you outside."

"Actually, I already have a formal suit," Ruel replied.

"You do?"

He nodded, wearing his I-am-most-certainly-not-lying-to-save-Kamas expression. "Enitalp left it in the bag he lent me."

"Would his clothes even fit you?" Yugo asked. The Enutrof king was kind of fat, and Ruel was...not.

"A lot of people have fallen for the scam where they need to replace their wardrobe every time they gain a few pounds, but not us," Ruel said proudly. "With Enutrof clothes, one size really does fit all."

"Fine," Amalia said. "In that case, Yugo and I will go shopping, while you and Adamaï can..."

"Go to the hospital," Yugo finished.

Adamaï looked up. "What? For the last time, I'm fine."

"I know, but there's no harm in getting checked to make sure everything healed properly."

"Besides the medical bill," Ruel muttered.

"Please, Ad? I'd feel a lot better."

Adamaï rolled his eyes. "Fine, fine, I'll go to the stupid fairy doctor."

"Alright, so we will meet up here in say, two hours."

"Sounds good," Ruel replied, and he turned to leave.

"Aren't you forgetting something?" Amalia asked. She held out her hand expectantly.

"No." He looked at her hand. "But suddenly I have a bad feeling."

"We can't buy clothes without Kamas,"

"That's not always true," Ruel noted.

"And we're not digging through any dumpsters."

"Oh. Well, you can spend your own Kamas."

"We already spent all our Kamas rescuing you!"

"Who's fault is that?"

Amalia glared at him.

"Okay, fine," he relented, pulling out a small bag of coins from his havensack. "But I want the change back when your shopping nonsense is over,  _and_ after the mission, I can pawn off whatever foolishness you purchase and recoup some of my losses."

"Agreed." She reached for the bag of coins, but Ruel had a death-grip on it. "Ruel? You have to let go."

"I'm trying but it hurts!"

Amalia braced her foot against him and pulled with all her might, finally yanking it free and falling unceremoniously on the ground. "Right," she said, salvaging her dignity. "We meet up again in two hours."

They went their separate ways and Ruel looked at Adamaï after the others were out of sight. "So, I'll tell them you went to the stupid fairy doctor if you will."

"Deal."

WWW

Eniripsa was far too crowded for Adamaï's liking, but all human cities were. As far as human cities went, the place was...pleasant. Yes, there was no denying that Eniripsas tried to keep things pleasant, but as he followed Ruel down more and more streets, the place seemed to become less so.

"You know, you kind of stand out," Ruel noted conversationally.

"Of course I stand out. I have moss growing on my chest." Actually, if he really did see an Eniripsa about it, then someone would have removed it. He peeled off the green bandage gingerly, but all that was left from his wound was an impressive scar. He could have walked around in his humanoid form instead of his dragon form, but his humanoid form didn't look particularly human, and he didn't feel like being mistaken for a mime again.

"Standing out is a useful skill in this kind of work," Ruel said. "Alibert was great at it. He'd walk into a tavern and ask loud questions about certain criminals, and the people who knew something would exchange nervous glances when he wasn't looking. See, you need fire to smoke out your target, and then there'd be me in the corner, playing cards with an Ecaflip, watching which way the wind was blowing."

"And I suppose you want me to be the fire for...whatever it is that we're doing?"

"We're gathering information," Ruel said. "We need to find out what the Eniripsa Kingdom wants most, how we can gain favor with the queen, and what factors might oppose your people's return. And yes, I want you to be the fire."

Adamaï imagined himself burning down the city block and smiled. "So, metaphor aside, I'm going to..."

"Do you see that tavern over there?" He pointed at a building with a sign on the front that read,  _The Inflammatory Anthrax_.

"Yeah."

"That's an excellent example of marketing to a specific niche. It's also the sort of place that Alibert wouldn't appreciate me bringing Yugo to, but I'm sure you'll be fine. I'm going to go in there and be ignored, and in a minute or two you're going to go in there too so no one knows we're together. Don't look at me and don't talk to me, but other than that, just be yourself."

Ruel walked into the tavern and Adamaï waited. He flew up to a roof and thought about people. Most of the World of Twelve was nearly empty with only a few farmers over several miles of roads, if that. And then there were cities where humans built houses on top of other houses and couldn't go two feet without bumping into someone. Clearly they were insane.

He walked into the tavern after he figured he had waited enough. He didn't see Ruel in there, but he didn't look either. He sat down on a stool at the front of the tavern. Not all of the people there were Eniripsas, but the innkeeper was. He was bone thin, shirtless, and he didn't even have a mustache. Either taverns had different rules than inns, or the man had no idea what he was doing.

"I'll have a drink," he said. He felt thirsty, and he didn't trust any food that the Eniripsa would make.

The man looked down at him skeptically. "Are you sure you're old enough to drink, dragon?"

Adamaï met his gaze. "You don't know much about dragons, do you?" He could drink long before he could handle solid food. But then again, so could Chibi, so maybe the man was just stupid.

The man shrugged and pointed at a large menu on the wall behind him. "Those are the drinks. Which do you want?"

Adamaï looked up and down list, not recognizing any of the names. He tried not to flinch as a Xelor appeared on the stool next to him. "I recommend the cherry à la mode," the Xelor said.

"Uh, sure," Adamaï said. "I'll have what he said."

The skinny Eniripsa grunted and fluttered into the kitchen. Adamaï turned and looked at the Xelor. He wore a dark blue robe over light blue armor, and the rest of his body was covered in bandages. A Feca woman sat down next to him.

"Allow me to introduce myself," the Xelor said. "My name is Monortem Muludnep, and this is my friend and traveling companion, Svalinn." He motioned to the Feca. Adamaï couldn't tell the Xelor's age, but the Feca seemed to be about as old as Eva. She had glasses, teal hair, and a shield generator on her arm. "Might I inquire as to what brings you to the city of healers, Lord Dragon?"

"My name's Adamaï, and my brother and I are exploring. We just left the Enutrof Kingdom, and we're planning on seeing all the major nations eventually."

The innkeeper—or was he a  _tavern_ -keeper?—set a plate in front of him. It had a slice of pie with something white melting on top of it. Monortem flashed him a thumbs-up. It was cold when Adamaï took a bite, but it tasted like diabetes so he kept eating.

"So how about you?" Adamaï asked. "You said you were traveling?"

"Ah, yes I did. You see, I had developed a variation of the Time Stop spell that is more effective than the original by far, and much easier to cast. Unfortunately, it also had the side effect of making my heart stop beating."

"That sounds serious," Adamaï noted.

"No, of course not," Svalinn replied sarcastically. "It's not like you need a heart to live or anything."

"Usually my heart would restart itself after a few seconds," Monortem continued. "The heart is a fascinating piece of machinery, by the way. Doctor Nietsneknarf showed me a few, and you could make a clock out of one—but I digress. Unfortunately, my most recent use of the spell had more alarming side effects, prompting my visit to said doctor, which, as I said is unfortunate because my variation could otherwise revolutionize the way Xelors all over the World of Twelve break the fourth dimension and its corresponding wall."

"That's too bad," Adamaï replied. "So why here specifically? Did you just like the name,  _The Inflammatory Anthrax_?"

"Ah, about that." He sounded uncomfortable and glanced at Svalinn before continuing. "There was a rumor that we heard during our stay that said that the establishment serves pudding."

"Do they?" he asked with sudden interest.

Svalinn laughed bitterly. "Does it  _look_  like I'm eating pudding?"

"Oh."

"And yet, this is fortunate," Monortem said. "There is a conundrum with which I have often wrestled that I hope upon which your draconic wisdom might be able to shed some light."

"Go on."

"Suppose a Cra shoots an arrow at a Sacrier at twenty feet, and suppose the arrow flies at twenty feet per second. Half a second after the arrow is released, it is ten feet away from the Sacrier. Half of half of a second later, it is five, and then two and a half, and then one and three fourths, and so forth. It takes a finite amount of time to go a finite distance, but that finite amount of time can be divided into infinite increments, and as any number multiplied by infinity becomes infinity, it should take an infinite amount of time to reach its target."

"Wait, hold on," Adamaï interrupted. "I've seen Cras shoot arrows. Heck, I've been shot at by Cras. It doesn't take forever."

"Precisely! In none of my twenty test samples did the duration of the arrow come anywhere close to infinite."

"Wait, you tested this?"

"For science!"

"He made the Sacriers sign a waiver first," Svalinn explained.

"So you had twenty Sacriers sign legal documents, and  _then_  you shot them?"

"For  _science_!"

Well, none of Adamaï's friends were Sacriers, so what did he care? "So, what is the problem?"

"The problem, Lord Dragon, is that the theory and the observations contradict each other. When this happens, either the observations were made incorrectly or the theory is flawed and should be replaced. But if it must be replaced, then with what?"

"Oh. Um, right." Part of him wanted to scream, "I'm not Balthazar!" But an even greater part of him wanted to avoid saying, "I don't know."

"So the way I understand it, it's like this," Adamaï explained. "You haven't really observed the experiment. Because Cra arrows are energy based, they are only particles when you observe them. Otherwise, they're waves. It's called the Observer Effect, which is why observed pots never boil and stuff. Now, if you were to freeze time and observe the arrow at every fractional increment, then you'll cause the arrow to maintain a nearly constant state of particle-ness—, and it really will take forever."

Monortem paused thoughtfully. "Interesting. I will have to try that."

Svalinn groaned. "He will, you know that? He really will. And he'll do it for science, too."

"Indeed," he agreed. "I must say this was a serendipitous encounter. And you are certain that you wandered into this area by chance?"

"Yeah, why?"

"Well, I began to wonder...but no. I suppose that even the capture of a princess would be beneath the notice of a dragon."

"Yeah, I—hold on, what happened?"

"Haven't you heard? The Eniripsa princess has gone missing a few days hence. Anyone heralding her return would receive the undying gratitude of the queen herself, but at this point, she is expecting little more than a ransom note."

Undying gratitude? "Excellent!"

Svalinn gave him a dirty look along with the tavern-keeper and several patrons. Monortem looked uncomfortable. "The correct response to misfortune," he whispered, "would be, 'How terrible!' Also, 'That's bad,' would be acceptable."

"Right," he said. "That's bad. Excuse me for a moment. Ruel! Ruel!"

He saw Ruel chatting with a younger Sram woman. He scowled at Adamaï as he approached. "Thanks, Adamaï. I  _did_  have a very convincing cover story."

"That's not important. I have good news!" Monortem looked at him meaningfully. "I mean, bad news. The princess has disappeared!"

"What? But she owes me money!"

"No, not Amalia. The  _Eniripsa_  princess!"

"Oh." Ruel's eyes grew wide and he beamed. "That's perfect!"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Why the physics jokes? Because no one will listen to them in real life, and if I have to awkwardly force them into fanfiction to get them heard, then so help me, I will. For similar conundrums phrased even more awkwardly (by directly translating mad Greek philosophers), look up Zeno's Paradoxes.
> 
> Svalinn is a shield from Norse mythology that prevents the sun from lighting the earth of fire. These days, we call it the stratosphere, but spelling those backwards (Nnilavs? Erehpsotarts? Sotarts?) never sounded like cool names, so I kept it as Svalinn.
> 
> Finally, I would like to have a moment of silence for all the Sacriers who were forced to sign legal documents. May they find strength through suffering. Thank you.


	14. Success

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence; then success is sure."
> 
> ― Mark Twain

Adamaï and Ruel were waiting for them when Yugo and Amalia finished their sidequest.

"Please tell me that you took so long because you were looking for a good bargain," Ruel said hopefully.

"No," Yugo replied. "We took so long because Amalia needed to try on the entire store."

"To find a good bargain, right?"

Amalia laughed. "That's funny. You're funny, Ruel."

Ruel's shoulders sagged with a sigh. "Well, I knew from the start that this was going to cost me," he growled. "So how much change is left over?"

Amalia hesitated. "Before I tell you that, are you aware of how much medical bills can cost? I mean, a single heart attack could cost a fortune."

"Hilarious," he said flatly. "Seriously, how much is left?"

"I don't want to say none, but yeah, none."

"What?" he shrieked. " _What?_ "

"Medical bills, Ruel!"

His hands trembled and his face turned into a series of fascinating colors, ending with bone white. "I will murder you in your sleep," he promised coldly. "And sell your organs on the black market."

"Oh, don't be so dramatic," she replied easily. "It's not like I've never spent Kamas on you. And besides, you'll be able to sell these when we're done anyway."

Ruel looked down at the bags they were carrying. "Hold on. How many outfits did you  _get_?"

"We're going to talk to the kings and queens of the entire world, remember? Did you expect me to wear the same dress for all of them?"

"Yes.  _Very_  yes."

"Oh," she said slowly. "Well, you were wrong."

"So are all these bags yours?" Ruel asked. "Wasn't Yugo supposed to get something too?"

"I got a cloak," Yugo said.

"Yeah,  _a_ cloak," Amalia noted. "There's the whole store, and he gets the cheapest thing there."

"Really?" Ruel smiled. "Good man, Yugo. Good man."

"Honestly, it was like shopping with Eva again," Amalia continued, "only  _she_  stays awake."

"I couldn't help it," Yugo protested. "That was a very soft wooden bench. I know it was in one of these bags." They had five bags full of clothes, but when he looked through them, all he could find were dresses. "Oh well. I'll show you later, Adamaï. It's blue."

"I can't wait to see it," Adamaï said indifferently.

"So what have you two been up to?" Yugo asked.

Adamaï grinned. "We found out that the Eniripsa princess has been kidnapped."

"That's terrible!"

Adamaï and Ruel shared a glance. "On his first try, too."

Ruel nodded approvingly. "The kid's a natural."

Yugo looked at both of them. "What are you talking about?"

"About how we got banned from the Inflammatory Anthrax," Adamaï explained.

"You got banned from anthrax?" Yugo asked. "That's a disease, right?"

"An inn, technically," Adamaï replied. "But I'm sure there were diseases present. But they didn't have any pudding, so I'm not upset."

"So, was this before or after you went to the doctor's?" Yugo asked suspiciously.

Adamaï hesitated briefly. "You're asking a lot of questions. It's almost like you don't trust me. Anyway, if we help the queen find her hopefully not-dead offspring, we could build some of that goodwill we need."

"Huh." Yugo frowned thoughtfully. "So we're going for the classic heroism approach." He grinned. "Pinpin is going to be mad he missed out on this!"

Ruel barked a laugh. "You got it wrong, kiddo. If it were about protecting some damsel in distress, or even saving one, you'd want the Iop. But if you want to hunt people down like the bow wows they are, you want to talk to me."

WWW

Their first order of business was to investigate the scene of the crime. Well, second. First they had to make sure that there was a crime to begin with. Hunting down a runaway instead of a kidnapper was a different ball game entirely. No, make that the  _third_. The  _first_  was and always would be finding out the reward.

Ruel once spent more Kamas on the hunt than he got from the bounty. He never made  _that_ mistake again.

Unfortunately, all three orders of business were held up by one stubborn guard.

"What do you mean, the palace is closed?" Amalia demanded.

"Until Princess Livda is returned, Queen Nillicinep is not seeing anyone." The guard was leaner than most guards Ruel had dealt with, and he had a thick, blonde mustache.

"I know the queen must be upset," Amalia said, "but she can't let personal reasons shut down her entire kingdom!"

The guard's expression didn't change, but his translucent wings buzzed like a hornet. Ruel stepped between them before someone got hurt. "What my idiot friend meant to say—"

"Hey!"

"Was that we are a group of traveling professionals, and you, my friend, are in need of  _professional_  help." The guard scowled, and Ruel moved on quickly. "We are the Brotherhood of the Tofu. This is Yugo the..." The whole king thing would take too long to explain. "The Eliatrope, and his dragon brother Adamaï. And here is the titular Tofu, Az, and Amalia. I am Ruel Stroud, captain of the Real Boitar, precious metal lead, and bounty hunter extraordinaire." He decided to leave out his brief stint as a cheergeezer. No one needed to know about that.

The guard groaned. "Not another lot of...hold on. You said your name was Ruel Stroud? I think I've heard of you."

Ruel blinked, but tried to cover his surprise. "I get that a lot." He'd heard of him? Good, right? Or wait. Oh no.

"Yeah, aren't you the Enutrof from when Baron Timov's daughter was captured by Trools?"

"That name doesn't ring a bell."

"And then you accidently killed her while trying to rescue her?"

"Uh..."

"And then put a Trool in a dress and tried to pass it off as the Baron's daughter?"

"Look," Ruel said after a moment. "The present has enough problems already without bringing up things that we may or may not have done ages ago. But right now, we want the same thing you want, to find out where your princess is and drag her back here kicking and screaming!"

"To rescue her!" Amalia said quickly. "He meant to say, 'rescue her.'"

The guard's eyes narrowed suspiciously. "So, that's what you're after. Well, you're a week too late, anyway."

"You don't mean that someone else rescued her first?" Ruel gasped. "Which would be, uh, great."

"No, but we stopped inviting  _freelancers_  to handle this last week after they came in to 'look for clues,' and all the royal silverware disappeared," the guard said. "And three priceless paintings. And a bust of the queen's grandmother made out of solid gold."

" _Solid_  gold?" Ruel repeated. "Are you sure it wasn't one of those silver-lead knockoffs with gold plating? Because a lot of people can't tell the difference."

The guard didn't respond.

"And when you say priceless, do you mean priceless like a mother's love, or the good kind of priceless?"

The guard's wings buzzed. "I think you should leave."

WWW

"Maybe we could find another guard who's a bit more reasonable?" Amalia suggested afterwards."

Ruel sat down under a tree. "You mean like willing to take bribes? Maybe, but I ain't paying for it."

"Or willing to let us through," she suggested. She turned to Yugo. "What do you think? You've been quiet recently. Is something bothering you?"

Was there? He didn't think he was acting odd, but Adamaï shot her a glare anyway. "He doesn't have to talk about it if he doesn't want to."

"Oh, so  _now_  you're acting protective?"

He had messed up his chances with an entire kingdom. Two, counting New Sufokia. With his people depending him, he couldn't afford those losses. He couldn't afford any.

"What's that supposed to mean? I'm always protective!"

"Yeah, unless you're shoving him to the brink of death!"

But if Ruel was right, Eniripsa was the only kingdom he needed, and he had been feeling fine until...

"Hey! My plan got all of us out alive! What was your plan?"

"Do you think this is right?" Yugo asked suddenly.

"What?" Ruel asked.

"Rescuing Livda?"

"Who? You mean the princess?"

"No, I mean Livda," he said. "A girl was kidnapped. If she weren't a princess, would we spare the time to rescue her? Would we even care?"

"If she weren't a princess," Ruel replied, "she wouldn't have been taken in the first place. Being  _someone_ comes with a long list of enemies and friends that  _anyone_ just doesn't have to deal with."

"I guess," Yugo said noncommittally. "But we're not helping her because of what happened to her. We're helping her because of who she is."

"So? There's nothing wrong with helping out the rich and powerful."

"Yes, but we're profiting from tragedy!"

Ruel hesitated for a moment. "Everyone does it. Soldiers wouldn't make any money without wars. Bounty hunters wouldn't make any money without criminals. Boufbowl players wouldn't make any money without an audience fixated on unadulterated brutality." His expression softened. "You're a good kid. I'm not. But no one cares. Save a man's life, he won't care if you did it for money or kindness, and a man you kill will be just as dead no matter why you kill him.

"You like helping people more than getting paid. I've met a man who demanded to be paid in muffins instead of Kamas, so I guess that's not that different. If it helps, focus on your people and how you're helping them come to a world where they can live in peace. Of course, it's kind of a moot point since  _we have no leads_  and can't even investigate the crime scene!"

Yugo leaned back and thought about it for a moment. It felt…false to help someone just for what he'd get out of it, but his people needed him, and even though it wasn't a perfect solution, it was  _a_  solution. "Yeah, we're not  _allowed_  to go in," he said, brightening up a bit. "But when have we ever let someone telling us no stop us?"

Amalia looked up sharply. "Are you suggesting that we break into the Eniripsa Queen's palace? Remember where breaking rules got you in Enutrof?"

"Yeah," Adamaï replied. "It got us a smelly old guy and a Dofus. I say we try!"

"It also ruined your chances of an alliance," Amalia said. "We want to  _avoid_ that here."

"But if we rescue her daughter, I'm sure the queen will overlook something like trespassing," Yugo said. "Right?"

"Yes,  _if._  I hate to be the voice of reason—that was supposed to be  _your_  job—Adamaï, but what if someone else rescues her first? Then we'll have a criminal record and nothing to show for it."

"So we shouldn't even try unless we're sure that we'll have an advantage over people who already have several days head start," Yugo summarized. "And a fresh crime scene." He looked at Ruel hopefully, but the Enutrof shook his head.

"What if we skipped the crime scene entirely?" Adamaï asked suddenly.

"Where else would we look?" Yugo asked.

"Have I ever told you about psychic hunting? It's like Wakfu vision, but with your eyes closed."

"I learned Wakfu vision with my eyes closed," Yugo reminded him.

"Bad example. Remember when Pinpin died? It's like that, only with no one dying."

Yugo considered that. "Okay. So how does that help?"

"Basically, if you're all empathetic and stuff with someone, you can hunt them psychically. I used to have a pet gerbil when I was younger, and now if there's a gerbil anywhere nearby, I can find it."

"I didn't know you had a pet," Yugo said. "What happened to it?"

"I got hungry."

"Eew!" Amalia said.

"Hey! Don't diss Joey! He was delicious."

"Again, eew."

"So, if you knew Livda, you'd be able to find her," Yugo said. "That doesn't help us...unless you could teach it to someone. Hey, Amalia! Have you ever met her?"

"You mean at the annual international princess party?"

"Do you have one of those?"

"No, but we should," she said thoughtfully. "Actually, no, we shouldn't. The Sram princess is a total tramp, and the Pandawa princess never shuts up. But the Eniripsa princess, her I have never met."

"Alright, so we just have to recruit someone who has. One of the guards, maybe, or a palace servant?"

"It's more complicated than that," Adamaï said.

"That happens to us a lot."

"You can't have just met the person, you have to really know them. It's about empathy. You need loads of the stuff for the spell to work."

"Then we'll go to the queen herself."

"And I'm not sure Eniripsas can learn this spell."

"Oh. So how does this help us?"

"It doesn't alone. But I was thinking about empathetic bonds, and I think I could transfer it from someone. It's all about breaking it down to its basic parts." Adamaï paused thoughtfully. "If you did break it down, you'd get the word 'pathetic,' but that's besides the point."

"So all we need to do is find a way to talk to the queen, and...figuratively rip her heart out?"

Adamaï hesitated. "You know what? Transfer is the wrong word. Think of it more like sharing."

It seemed risky, but they didn't have any other leads. And if they didn't find Livda, who would? The other bounty hunters had been looking for her for days without success. "Alright. The guards already won't let us in, so we'll have to sneak in. Amalia? Ruel? You can't come through my portals easily, but if you could cause a distraction, I'd appreciate it."

Amalia frowned. "This sounds a lot like how you snuck onto the Sufokian ship at the Crimson Claws, and you remember how that turned out."

"Yeah. They never saw me until after I let them."

"And you ended up in the middle of a warzone with a Shushu army and a psychotic Eliatrope."

Yugo laughed easily. "Yeah, but really, what are the chances that something like that could happen twice?"

WWW

Amalia put a seed in the ground and covered it in dirt. "Do you ever get the feeling that you're doing something incredibly stupid, but you keep on doing it anyway?"

"Yeah, but Alibert really wanted me to help Yugo get to Oma, and I owed him a few Kamas," Ruel replied.

Amalia rolled her eyes. "You know what I mean. The Sufokians have already opened fire on us, regardless of how optimistically Yugo remembers that meeting, and I think we're all wanted criminals in Enutrof."

"Wanted? Yes," Reul admitted. "Criminals? That's complicated."

"How is it complicated?" she asked, looking up from the garden she was making. "Even if you accept that the Dofus was never his to begin with, you robbed the king  _twice_."

"What are you talking about? I  _found_  that gold and shovel underground. There was no way of knowing if they actually  _belonged_ to someone."

"Even though you pried the shovel from the king's fingers and took the gold from his treasury?"

"Enutrof law," he replied as if that explained everything. "It's enough to make lawyers swoon and grown men weep."

"See, that's what's wrong with—"

"Heads up!"

They dove into a bush and hid. Neither made a move as a pair of Eniripsas buzzed past them. After they were out of sight, Amalia and Ruel climbed out.

Ruel plucked burrs and thorns out of his clothes irritably. "Why is it that I always seem to end up in the thorny part of the bush?"

"Maybe it doesn't like you?" Amalia suggested innocently.

"It's a  _bush_!"

"And it doesn't like you." She knelt down in the dirt and resumed working. "See, it's like this. There are all these people with powerful, important parents, and they do whatever they want because their powerful, important parents will get them out of it. If they vandalize a public street, their parents will pay the fine. If they burn the monarch of a nearby country in effigy, their parents will convince the constable to look the other way. I don't want to be that kind of person."

"Uh-huh," Ruel replied, half listening.

"I mean, sure, I'm doing this to help Yugo instead of for my own amusement, but if we get caught and my dad has to bail me out, everyone's going to look at him and be like, 'He's supposed to run a kingdom? He can't even keep his own daughter under control.'"

"Yup."

"And then he'll ground me until I'm forty so he can keep me around to look after the kingdom's affairs that he never had the patience for."

"Are you done?"

She nodded. "Thanks for listening."

"No, I mean, are you done with the garden?"

"Oh." She looked at the soil and mentally went through what seeds she had planted. "Yeah, I think we're good." She put her hand to the ground and made her plants grow.

And the two of them ran like all of Shukrute was after them.

Yugo said that he needed a distraction while he snuck through the palace. Well, making the palace gardens carnivorous seemed like a good place to start.

_This is a terrible idea._

WWW

The Eniripsa palace, Yugo decided, was a lot harder to sneak through than the Sufokian battle ship. The palace wasn't nearly as crowded, but the Sufokian ship was full of "secret" passageways in plain sight that he could crawl through, but were also completely unguarded.

He never got the chance to ask Adale about those.

In the palace, he and Adamaï spent every few minutes hiding behind statues.

"This is taking too long," Adamaï growled.

"Quiet! They'll hear you!" Yugo whispered. Two Eniripsas stood on the other side of the statue. Yugo had hoped that they would keep walking, but they stopped in the middle of the hall and started talking to each other.

"We could zaap out of here, you know."

Yugo looked around. Wakfu vision was good for picking out anything alive, but walls were harder. Yugo could see people around corners, but he couldn't be sure if there would be a wall in the way to prevent them from being seen. "Or, we could wait."

"That could take forever!"

"We're not in a hurry," Yugo said softly.

"It's still boring."

"Sneaking can be like that!"

Yugo heard the hum of wings as a third Eniripsa rushed into the hall. "Hey, guys!" he said. Yugo couldn't see much of him besides that his Wakfu was blue. "Remember that new fertilizer they started using?"

"Hm?" one replied.

"What fertilizer?" the other asked.

"The fertilizer for the palace gardens."

"We use fertilizer for that? I thought we just let things grow naturally."

"Seriously? Am I the only one around here who gives a crap about that sort of thing?"

There was a pause. "Apparently."

"That was a joke."

Another pause. "I don't get it."

"Never mind. Anyway, they started using a new fertilizer for the palace gardens."

"Okay. So?"

"So now, the palace gardens are eating people!"

"Really?"

"No way!"

"Exactly!" the newcomer said triumphantly.

"I gotta see this!"

All three Eniripsas flew out of the hall, leaving Yugo and Adamaï alone.

"Well, I'll be," Adamaï said, coming out from behind the statue. "Remind me to be nice to Amalia sometime. In the distant, distant future."

"I hope no one gets hurt," Yugo said.

Adamaï rolled his eyes as they made their way down the hallway. "This is a nation of healers. They need the practice anyway."

They stuck to the widest halls. The wider halls would lead to the more important places, and if the throneroom weren't the most important, it would at least be one of the top ten. They found it, but the room was empty.

"Huh," Yugo said. "Well, I guess we can't expect the queen to sit on her throne all day long. If I were king—well, I am king, but I wouldn't sit in a throne all day long just because I had one."

"Does something seem off to you?" Adamaï fluttered to the ornate, cushioned chair and landed on it.

"Adamaï! You can't sit there! That's the queen's seat!"

"Oh, yeah," he agreed. "The guards would be furious if they saw me, you know, if  _there were any_. All of the other rulers we've talked to had guards all over the place. Not here."

They had avoided what guards they saw, but there weren't any posted at important places and only a few were patrolling the halls. "Well, yeah," Yugo said. "If I were in the queen's position and someone important to me got kidnapped, I'd send everyone out looking for her." He paused. "Heck,  _I'd_  be out looking for her. Maybe that's where she is!"

Adamaï's face fell. "Ah, dang it. That means that she could be anywhere. No, wait. If that were the case, wouldn't she have left someone else in charge while she was gone?"

"You're right. Besides, if all the queen's guards are looking for her daughter, then she'd need to organize everything. She's probably in the palace, just not in this room." He frowned. "But if she's not in the throne room filling queenly responsibilities, how will we even recognize her? We don't even know what she looks like!"

"I do."

"You do?"

Adamaï nodded. "I saw her at the big council thingy."

"Oh yeah. What was she like?"

Adamaï shrugged. "She didn't seem  _strongly_  opposed to the return. And she had wings, so, you know."

"Right. Well, there are a limited number of people in the palace, so we'll just have to look at all of them until we find her." He looked at the glowing Wakfu images through the walls. "Let's go!"

He jumped through a portal and Adamaï followed him. "And when we find her, we'll tell her that we're in it for the classic heroics, with no ulterior motives whatsoever."

There was something bitter in his brother's voice. "Is there something wrong?"

"No, it's just that sometimes it feels like our people aren't really a priority for you."

Yugo looked at him. "What are you talking about? I'm trying to help them."

"Yeah, them and everyone else you meet."

"They need my help, too."

"They need help," Adamaï agreed, "but anyone can help them. Your people only have you." He stopped to inspect an Eniripsa on the other side of a wall, then moved on.

"Well, there's no reason I can't help them all, is there?"

"No, not if you have an infinite amount of time." He touched a scar on his face, one that Qilby had left him. "You don't. You don't have  _time_ to be everyone's friend, and you have a  _duty_ to your people."

They continued in silence. For the first time, Yugo wondered if he would make a good king. He had accepted his role, barely, though it had terrified him more than any blue box he had come across. But what sort of king would he be if he merely tolerated his position? He never wanted to be king; kingship had been forced on him.

The cliché heroics that Adamaï scorned, that was something he had chosen himself. He had never been good at looking the other way when someone needed help, but plenty of people did. Adamaï seemed to think that groups of wandering heroes passed through desperate villages in need of help on a weekly basis, but Yugo and his friends were the first humans Adamaï had ever known. The truth was that the only people Yugo had known who did what he and his friends did were...were in the stories Alibert had told him.

Yugo had grown up hearing the stories of people who made legends. He knew word for word the story of Scaevola the Sufferer, Kolb the Defender, and the story of Ottomai the Alchemist stayed with him long after Alibert had read it to him. What did it mean that as soon as he set off on his own, he had tried to live his childhood bedtime stories?

But Adamaï had a point. All his people had was him, and he couldn't be a good king for them if he was too busy being a hero for everyone else.

Could he?

"That's her." Adamaï pointed at a figure through a wall. She stood alone in a bedroom.

Yugo took a deep breath and gently pushed the door open. "Um, hello?" he said when the queen didn't seem to notice him.

She turned slowly. She had light blonde hair and pointed ears, and her eyes were red, as though she had wept and ran out of tears. Besides her wings, she bore a resemblance to Eva during the weeks after Tristepin died. The queen looked at them slowly. "The guards let you in?"

Yugo looked at Adamaï. "Technically," the dragon said. The guard they spoke to outside had asked them to leave, but the few guards inside the palace hadn't even seen them.

"I remember you." She sounded distant. "You are the dragon Adamaï, are you not?" She turned to Yugo. "And you must be..."

"I'm his brother, Yugo. We think we can...we're here because we can find your daughter."

Yugo had expected surprise, even hysteria. The queen blinked slowly. "In exchange for what?"

"Sorry?"

"I have gone through  _so_  many of you already." Her voice was tired and grew cold. "You say you can, and you haven't, which means you won't. Not for the standard reward, so you come here to negotiate the price of my daughter's life and safety. I don't care which of you brings her back, so to make this quick, I'll ask you again. What do you want?"

"We want to help!" Yugo said. Suddenly he realized where they were. The bed threw him off. The bed was big enough for an adult—heck, it was big enough for five—so he assumed it was the queen's room. But there was a worn, toy stuffed quaquack on the bed next to a stuffed piwi, and a colorful and crudely drawn picture sat on the dresser. No, this was the princess's room. The queen had come here to...do what exactly?

Why had Eva spent every day next to Tristepin's shrine?

"My brother knows a spell for finding people, and he needs to look at the part of your soul that is linked to your daughter." He hesitated. "Adamaï can probably explain it better than I can."

"No, that was pretty much it," Adamaï said."

"Right. So we just need you to...what do we need her to do again?"

"Just focus on the memory of the person you're trying to find," Adamaï explained. In his humanoid form, he floated up so he was at eye level with the queen. "This should only take a moment."

The queen took a step back and looked at Adamaï, for the first time appearing frightened. " _Plehh oot reehh, dess erthurb roy za, ooy ra?_ "

"You speak draconic?" Yugo asked.

"Yes," Adamaï said in response to her question. "Yes, we are."

The queen nodded slowly and closed her eyes. "Then do what must be done."

Adamaï put his three-fingered hands on the sides of her head and closed his eyes. For a moment, there was silence.

And then there was a scream. Queen Nillicinep screamed as though her heart were being ripped from her chest, and then she fell to the floor. Yugo watched in numb shock, waiting for her to move.

"Yikes," Adamaï said after a moment. "I hope no one heard that."

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Scaevola is a Roman soldier who was known for burning his hand off in front of the leader of an invading army to convince him that Romans were too crazy to mess with, so apparently they have Sacriers in real life. Eniripsas are supposed to have a thing for languages, and if people like the Osamoda who guarded Grougaloragran's Dofus could speak draconic, I figured that it wasn't a dead language. Also, Nillicinep has been brushing up on it since the Council of Twelve episode (seriously, if it weren't for that episode, I would have nothing to go on in this story). Kolb, though, is just block backwards without the C.


	15. Thief

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "There must be some way out of here" said the joker to the thief  
> "There's too much confusion", I can't get no relief  
> Businessmen, they drink my wine, plowmen dig my earth  
> None of them along the line know what any of it is worth.
> 
> "No reason to get excited", the thief he kindly spoke  
> "There are many here among us who feel that life is but a joke  
> But you and I, we've been through that, and this is not our fate  
> So let us not talk falsely now, the hour is getting late"
> 
> -Bob Dylan

Yugo looked down at the unconscious form on the rug.  Queen Nillicinep, ruler of the Eniripsa people, someone that ten thousand Eliatropes needed him to become friends with, was fortunately not dead.  Judging by her blood curdling scream, she hadn’t enjoyed the experience, but she’d get better.  Hopefully.

“Well,” Adamaï said with forced calm, “that was unexpected.  “Anyway, we need to go.  Right now.”

“What?  We can’t just leave her like this!”

“Fascinating hypothesis.  Let’s test it.”

“I mean, we shouldn’t.  We can at least move her onto the bed.  I’ll grab her arms, you grab her feet.  Or are we not supposed to move someone who’s injured?  No, that’s only for back injuries, right?”

“You know, considering how many trained medical experts there are around here, why don’t we leave their queen to them and get out of here before anyone notices us?” Adamaï suggested.  “Because the situation looks pretty bad for us.”

“Why?” Yugo asked.  “What does it look like?”

The sound of a swarm of locusts screamed at them from outside the window.  A squadron of Eniripsa guards crashed into the bedroom, heedless of the shattered glass.  The Enirpsa in the center was larger than all the others and had a wand taller than he was.  “My name is Surazal Ayotnom.  You assaulted the queen.  Prepare to die.”

“Oh,” Yugo said.  “So that’s what it looks like.”

WWW

“Well, that was disappointing.”

“I know what you mean,” Illin replied.

“I mean, I was expecting something amazing, you know?” Richard continued.  “You always hear about these sort of things happening to other people, but when they finally happen to you, it’s just...”

“Anticlimactic?” Illin suggested.  

“Exactly!”  Richard sighed.  “Maybe I should have volunteered to let that plant eat me.  Sure it would have been messy, but it would have been an _experience._ ”  

“Surazal didn’t seem to enjoy it.”

Richard rolled his eyes.  “Yeah, but that’s _Surazal_.  He doesn’t enjoy anything that doesn’t, you know...”

“Yeah.”

They walked down the hallway in silence.  They could have flown, but Richard just wasn’t in the mood.  “It’s not the same without her,” he said softly.  “It seems like whenever this place got too quiet, you’d hear a sudden crash and more pandemonium than anywhere else on this side of the Bamboo Forest.”

“I remember.”

“And then you’d see her flying around the corner with half the palace guards on her heels, carrying their giant butterfly nets.  Did they ever repair those?”

A boy in a long, blue hat came dashing around the corner, running on the floor and walls in between jumps into small portals that appeared in the air.  A small white dragon flew behind him and turned around to release a massive blast of fire.

“Less flaming, more flying!” the boy called back.

“The best defense is to have your enemies reduced to ash!” the dragon countered.

“You want to reduce everything to ash!”

Richard and Illin stepped to the side of the hall to give the boy and the dragon room to pass, and stayed back as a large group of guards flew after them.  The guards seemed busy, scorched, and most importantly, irritated, so it was best not to bother them.  

“Well, that answers that question,” Richard said, noticing the butterfly nets some of the guards carried.

Illin nodded in agreement.  “Don’t worry.  I’m sure whoever kidnapped Princess Livda is currently regretting it.”

“If they aren’t already,” Richard said, “they will soon.”

WWW

Yugo led his brother into an intersection in the halls.  He remembered that the exit was to the right, but the right had a group of Eniripsas flying towards them, so he went left.  “They’re trying to herd us like gobballs!” he yelled.

“Can gobballs breathe fire?” Adamaï countered.

“I don’t know!” Yugo said with exasperation.  “I’m not an Osamoda!”

“That was a rhetorical question!”

“This is not the time for rhetoric!  This is the time to find a window!”  Yugo wished he could just make another long distance portal, but those took too long and the Eniripsas never gave him enough time.  

“Or, you could use a Wakfu beam to carve through solid stone and human flesh and make your own window,” Adamaï suggested.

“We can’t go around killing people just because it would be easier!” Yugo stated.  “I don’t know why that’s so hard to understand.”

“Easy or not, these people are still annoying!”

They bolted into another room and were ambushed by four guards hiding behind the doorway.   _Should have checked for that,_ Yugo thought.  One of the guards swung an oversized net over his head before he had the time to react, which did nothing because for some reason the mesh had been cut through.

“Not another one!” the guard protested angrily.  He threw the net away and pulled out his wand.

Adamaï’s chest swelled as he prepared to bury the guards in inferno.  “Inside breath, Ad!” Yugo said quickly as he slammed his knee into one guard’s jaw.  Adamaï glared at him, clenched his teeth, and seethed out a narrow stream of fire and scorched the tops of the remaining three guards’ heads.

“My hair!” one of the guards cried.  “My beautiful, luscious locks!”

Adamaï growled in annoyance.  “I started out with nothing but contempt for these people, and now I’m even running low on that!”

The room had a door that lead to another room that finally had a window.  But before they could escape, a figure from outside crashed through and rolled, broken glass scattering around him.  He rose to his feet and hovered a few inches above the floor, oversized wand in hand.  “ _You—shall not—pass!_ ”

“Fascinating hypothesis,” Adamaï said.  “Let’s test it.”

“Don’t kill him!”

Adamaï turned to Yugo in annoyance.  “I am not responsible for idiots with no survival instinct.”

“He’s just doing is job!”

“You can use that to justify nearly anything!”

“But you have to admit, we did break in here and knock out the queen.”

“You say that like it was my fault,” Adamaï said.

“I blame myself too.”

“What are you talking about?  This was all me.”

“Then you will pay for your crimes!” the Eniripsa bellowed.  Electricity arced from his wand and a bolt of lightning hit Adamaï square in the chest.

Yugo jumped back in shock and tried to blink away the after image of the flash.  He really needed to pay attention to people who wanted to kill him.  “Are you okay, Ad?”

Adamaï lay in a heap on the floor.  “Ow.”

He’d be okay, but Yugo couldn’t leave him there and they couldn’t run until Adamaï could at least stand.  “Well, you’re the one who wanted to stay and fight.”

“Shut up,” Adamaï grumbled.  

The Eniripsa’s wand flashed with electricity, and he shot a bolt of lightning at Yugo, but he dodged through a portal.  He wasn’t afraid of getting hit, but if he spent too much time dodging, the Eniripsa might try to finish off Adamaï.

“So, what kind of Eniripsa shoots lightning?” Yugo asked.  “I thought you were all healers.”

“We are,” he said.  “I will cure you of _life_.”

“Don’t you have an oath about not doing harm?  Or does that just apply to hippos?  I know hippos figure into it somewhere.”

“ _You_ have done harm.  I will prevent you from doing any more.”  For the first time, his grim face approached a semblance of a smile.  “It’s preventative medicine.”

He raised his wand dramatically as he prepared to strike, giving Yugo the opportunity he was looking for.  If he hurt a guard just for doing a job—who was impressively zealous about it too, Yugo admitted—there would be repercussions later.  But no one could blame him for disarming an opponent, right?

He drew a portal, but instead of jumping through it, he drew a second one on top of it.  A straight beam of blue hit the wand right as it was bursting with lightning.  A flash of light blinded Yugo, followed by a surge of heat that went up his arms and threw his body.  He was blasted back against the wall and fell to the floor.

_The lightning...traveled down the beam,_ he thought weakly.   _No fair._

He heard an angry scream and felt a blast of warm air wash over him.  Then he opened his eyes and saw his brother standing over him.

“Are you okay, Yugo?’

“Ow.”

“Well, you’re the one who wanted to try the pacifist run.”

Yugo couldn’t help but smile.  “Yeah, I guess I did.”

“What were you thinking, anyway?”

“I was hoping my attack would block his,” Yugo muttered.

“You tried to block lightning?” he asked incredulously.  “ _Lightning_?”

“You blocked a stasis blast,” Yugo pointed out.  “Just by breathing on it.”

“Yeah, but you have to _redirect_ lightning.  Everyone knows that.”

“Yeah, I...”  Yugo’s voice trailed off as he looked across the room and saw, next to two pieces of a broken wand, a charred skeleton.  “Did you _kill_ him?”

“You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

“That’s exactly what we were trying _not_ to do!”

“No, that’s what _you_ were trying not to do.  I was trying not to die, and look!  I succeeded!”

Yugo rose to his feet angrily—and so did the skeleton.  Red sinew covered blackened bone, and eyes refilled empty sockets and glared at both of them.  A tongue regrew in its mouth, and with a raspy voice, the skeleton hissed, “ _Surazal lives_!”

Yugo blinked.  “And I’m happy for you.  Ad?”

“Right, let’s go.”  The two of them flew out the window.

“See you later!” Yugo called back.

Surazal reached for his wand, but found it broken.  He tried to fly after them, but his wings had not yet regrown.  “You haven’t seen the last of me!” he screamed.

“I know!” Yugo called back, shrinking into the distance.  “I just said that!”

WWW

Yugo and Adamaï met up with the others where they first split up.  

“You didn’t run into any trouble, did you?” Yugo asked.  He had asked Ruel and Amalia to make a distraction, and it was a lot easier to get caught making a distraction than sneaking around.

Ruel laughed.  “It was like taking kamas from a baby.  But with less crying.  And drool.  Actually, there was some drool, but by then it was time to leave anyway.  You?”

Yugo shrugged.  “We did get into some trouble for—”

“Trespassing,” Adamaï interrupted.  

“Well, yes, and for—”

“More trespassing.”

Amalia looked at them suspiciously.  “How much trespassing did you two do?”

“A _lot_ ,” Adamaï said emphatically.  “We trespassed all over the place.  Finding her royal Queeness took _forever_.”

“But you did get the...whatever you were looking for, right?”

“Of course,” Adamaï said.  “We’re professionals.”

“And we got an undead storm fairy who will try to kill us on sight,” Yugo added.  “So we should probably leave town and start looking for Livda as soon as possible.”

“There are worse reasons to leave town,” Ruel noted nonchalantly.

“Hold on,” Amalia said.  She grabbed Yugo’s arm, making him wince.  “Are these _burn_ marks?”  She glared at Adamaï.  “What did you _do_?”

“It wasn’t him!” Yugo protested.  Then he noticed how bad his arms looked.  A red, jagged line when all the way up to his elbows.  He hid his arms behind his back and continued.  “I just got struck by lightning.”

“You got struck by lightning,” Amalia repeated.

“Yes.”

“On a clear day.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Inside.”

Yugo nodded.  “It looks a lot worse than it feels.”

Amalia shook her head.  “You know what?  I don’t care anymore.  You obviously don’t, so I don’t see why I should.”

Ruel put a hand on her shoulder and grinned.  “That’s the spirit!  The more you give up on caring, the happier you’ll be.”

WWW

Adamaï hated walking.  He had wings!  He could change into other things with wings!  He could change into things that could fly without wings!  But as long as he traveled with people who could only walk, then he could either walk with them or fly at a walking pace.  

He had slugged a pile of motherly love into his brain, and had been focusing on being irritable ever since to make up for it.

“I hate this place,” he muttered.

“You hate every place,” Amalia replied.

“It’s not that bad,” Yugo said, stepping around a pile of dragoturkey dung.  “I mean, sure, this place is kind of swampy, but if the kidnappers were hiding someplace nice, people would find them by accident.”  The land was swampy in some areas, and it others it went to muddy and then into an open field like it couldn’t make up its mind.  Yugo turned to Ruel.  “What should we expect to find?”

“Well,” Ruel said thoughtfully, “if they were traveling to another city, we’d have been pointed at the roads, so they must be holed up somewhere.  Numberwise, these kinds of jobs take more skill than strength, so I doubt they outnumber us.  If they’re hiding...they’re waiting for this to blow over?”  He shook his head.  “This ain’t going to blow over ever.  And they haven’t demanded a ransom yet, either.  Why would they be so good at the kidnapping, and so bad at the follow through?”  He shrugged.

“I always wondered what it would be like to be kidnapped by rogues,” Amalia mused.  “I heard stories about it, but none of the people we’ve run into wanted to cooperate.”

“What happened in the stories?” Yugo asked.

“Either the princess falls in love with one of the rogues and they live happily ever after, or a handsome knight kills all the rogues, and they still live happily ever after,” she said.  “Except for the rogues.  It’s all very romantic.”  

Ruel snorted.

“What?” she asked indignantly.  “You don’t like that idea?  I bet in your version, she gets rescued by some bounty hunter who lives happily ever after with his pile of reward money.”

“I wouldn’t complain,” he admitted.  “But in my experience, there are two kinds of kidnappers:  those with demands and those without.  Hopefully, our guys are just late, because those without demands tend to be psychopaths who enjoy long walks on the beach, team sports, and recreational murder.”

Adamaï fought down a sudden surge of panic.  “And the other kind?” he asked, forcing himself to sound calm.

“Those with demands are either after money or power, but either way it comes down to convincing the kid’s family that they’re the ones with the kid.  Signatures can be forged, so they can’t just send a letter.  They could send some of the kid’s hair, but a lot of people have the same hair color.  A lot of times they just cut off a finger and send that.”

A tree in front of Adamaï exploded and the grass around it burst into flames.  Yugo looked at him with concern.  “I sneezed,” Adamaï explained.  

“And that’s why _you’re_ in front,” Amalia said, eyeing the flames.

“No, I’m in front because I’m the only one who knows where we’re going,” Adamaï corrected.  He marched on stoically.  

Yugo put an understanding hand on his shoulder.  “It’s okay.  We’ll find her.”

Adamaï feigned indifference and kept on walking.  He didn’t know how far they were, but he could _feel_ the right direction.  He stood in a stream of glowing lives, pushing him towards the child he sought.  

And that stream brought him to a cave.

“Mine,” Ruel stated.

“You’re claiming it?” Amalia asked.  “What do you need a cave for at a time like this?”

“No, I mean it’s a mine.  Must have been abandoned a long time ago.”

“How can you tell?” Yugo asked.  

“It’s too round to be natural, and mines these days have minecart rails.  This mine survived the Ogrest at least, which is more than I can say for a lot of people I owe money to, fortunately.”  He winked and led the way underground.  

Amalia walked a few steps into the darkness and dropped some spores onto the ground.  They grew into mushrooms that emitted a strong, blue light, and she used one as a lantern.  “Wow, Ruel’s going first.  Can you smell the gold from here?”

“Thieves good enough to steal princesses are good enough to steal other goodies,” Ruel admitted.  “But the thing is, your hospital bills would be more expensive than doing this.”  He picked up a rock with his shovel and flung it deeper into the cave.  Adamaï didn’t see it hit a wire or a pressure plate, but it triggered a deafening, blinding explosion.  “And thus, our opponent has revealed himself.”

“What do you mean, he revealed himself?” Amalia demanded, wiping soot off her face.  “And warn me next time you want to blow something up.”

“And how’d you know there was a trap there?” Yugo asked.

“What?  Oh, this was the first place the tunnel was sturdy enough to get trapped without collapsing.  One time, me and Alibert cornered this Masquerade in a cave, and the Iop-brain put a trap where the ground was too soft.  The tunnel collapsed, and by the time we dug through, the man had starved to death.”

Yugo made a face.  “That’s terrible!”

“I know,” Ruel agreed sympathetically.  “We stuck to dead or alive bounties for a while after that.”

“And _how_ did he reveal himself?” Amalia asked again.

“Ah,” Ruel grinned.  “There are five classes that are any good at trapmaking, and only one of them uses explosives.  The kidnapper has revealed himself to be a Roublard!”

A voice echoed down the caves.  “And you have revealed yourself to be a fool.”

Adamaï didn’t even have time to register the click of a trigger being pulled before a crimson shot burst out of the darkness.  It would have hit Ruel square in the face had the old man not ducked.  The Enutrof scooped out a Lenald hole with his shovel as he rolled, as though he had done it a hundred times before, as though he had planned to do it then.

A second shot followed an instant later, identical to the first.  It was aimed right at Amalia, no, at the glowing mushroom she carried.  Adamaï heard the hum of one of Yugo’s portals before a massive explosion from the redirected shot echoed through the cave.  A cloud of dust surrounded them, blinding them temporarily, but Adamaï didn’t need to see to cast a shield.  The shield blocked the next few shots, and when the dust cleared, Adamaï was ready to flood the cave with flame.

But Yugo spoke first.  “Remington?” he asked in surprise.  “What are you doing here?”

WWW

Yugo had not expected to see Remington Smisse again in his life.  It had taken him and Tristepin all of their luck, skill, and a false king on the outside to get them out of Shukrute.  Remington had none of that, and Yugo hadn’t expected him to have lasted another five minutes in that sulfuric waste after the portal closed.

If Yugo had, he would have gone back for him.

“You _know_ this guy?” Adamaï asked in contempt.

“Yeah.  He...he saved my life.”

Amalia snorted derisively.  “And he tried to kill us all, like, every chance he got.”

“Well, maybe that’s how he says hello?” Yugo suggested hopefully.  “Anyway, what are you doing down here?”

Remington studied them before answering.  He looked beyond them as though expecting others, and his gaze rested on Adamaï before returning to Yugo.  The light from Amalia’s mushroom was dim, but from what Yugo could see, the man hadn’t changed a bit.  The red glow of the half-dozen Shushus he carried tainted his image in the Wakfu spectrum, but he still wore the same black cape, black mask, and carried the bow meow Grany on his shoulder.  The bow meow he called brother.

Remington holstered his pistols in a show of nonaggression.  “I live here.  My apologies for shooting at you.  I did not recognize you, and most of the guests who trespass here are...less than cordial.”

“Yeah, right,” Amalia replied sarcastically.  “And I suppose the Eniripsa princess just wandered here on her own, did she?”

Remington’s eyes widened for only an instant.  “How did you...nevermind.  Yes, the child resided with me for a time, but she has since left and joined...others.”  The Shushus he wore sniggered.  Remington ignored them.

“Liar,” Adamaï growled.  “We’re tracking her magically.”  The Shushus burst out laughing.  Adamaï turned to Yugo.  “If this is another guy that we’re going to play the ‘Thou shalt not kill’ game with, I get it, but do we have to stop and talk with him?”

“We won’t be long,” Yugo assured him.  Nothing about Remington’s behavior or demeanor inspired trust, but dang it, Yugo _wanted_ to trust him.  And he felt that the man needed to be trusted.  “So, you kidnapped Livda and brought her here, but you never issued a ransom, because...”

“He’s the middle man,” Ruel explained.  “He’s got the skills to get the goods, but not the manpower to do the exchange.  His buyers haven’t gotten here yet.”

Remington’s expression didn’t change.  “So you’re doing this for someone else,” Yugo continued.  “In exchange for...money?”

Remington snorted.  “Despite what your Enutrof friend may say, there are some things kamas can’t buy.  Power, on the other hand, can get you exactly what you need.”

“Right!  So...”  Yugo realized that he was thinking about it all backwards.  He looked at Grany.  There wasn’t much family resemblance between the two brothers, but Yugo didn’t look much like Adamaï either.  But there was a more obvious answer than simple genetics.  “Grany, you weren’t always a bow meow, were you?”

The creature hissed on Remington’s shoulder.  “What’s it to you?”

Yugo grinned.  “Because if you got stuck in a polymorph spell, then you’re in luck.  See, my friends and I are practically experts in that sort of thing.  My brother Adamaï got stuck as a tofu for nearly a day.”

“You did?” Amalia laughed, and Adamaï bristled.  

“And Amalia and I got turned into pigs once.”

“Ha!” Adamaï shot back.

“And another time, Ruel and I got turned into monkeys.”

“Good times,” Ruel mused.  “Good, good times.”

“So if there’s anyone who can help you turn back into a human, it’s us,” Yugo finished.  He took a step towards the two brothers.

Remington eyed him suspiciously.  “Now, why would someone like you want to help someone like me?”

“Why not?” Yugo replied.

“No, that’s a fair question,” Amalia said.  “ _Why_ do you want to bring a double crossing snake with us?  He tried to kill Eva, like, five times.”

“And Eva’s not with us anymore,” Yugo replied.  “Besides, he’s not a snake, he’s human and he needs our help.  That’s what we do.  Most importantly, when we were trapped in Shukrute, Remington helped us get out alive, and we betrayed him.”  It was Rubilax who threw Grany at Rushu to buy them time, but they were a team, and that meant sharing each other’s achievements with their sins.  “I have a debt that I’d like to repay.

_A king should know better than to be late on his debts._

Yugo stood at the edge of the dim, blue light and extended his hand.  He had hoped that Remington would have met him halfway, but the Roublard hadn’t moved.  He stood in darkness less visible than the Shushus he wore.  Fear and eagerness mixed in his eyes, and Yugo couldn’t tell which was winning.  

Then, as Yugo stood at the edge of the light, the man flinched.  He whipped out his pistol in a sharp reflex, and Yugo zaaped back to his brother’s side.

For a long moment, the man stood trembling in the darkness, his arm stretched out and gun pointed straight at Yugo.  Then, he took a breath and lowered his weapon.  “Regrettably, I do not think I will be joining your merry band,” he said with sudden calm.  “These days, I travel only with those I can trust, regardless of the promised prize, and that is an exclusive group.”

“Says the man covered in Shushus,” Adamaï sneered.  

“They’re predictable,” Remington replied easily.

“Well,” Ruel said, “I guess that brings us back to where we started.”

“Oh?  And where was that?”

“That was where you were about to the right thing—or the smart thing, if you prefer—and hand over the royal goods.”

Remington smirked.  “And if I say something cliche, like ‘over my dead body?’  You hardly seem the type to call the bluff.”

“You’re right,” Ruel admitted.  “And I am _certain_ that you will survive everything we do to you, and because it’s on the way, we’ll even drop you off at a hospital when we head back to the Eniripsa Kingdom.  And I am certain that the good doctors will be happy to inject you with all sorts of probably beneficial needles.”

Remington smiled, his teeth glistening in the dim light.  “Over my dead body it is, then.”

“Wait!” Yugo said.  “Could we talk about this?”

“See, that’s the attitude that keeps humans from taking you seriously,” Adamaï said.  “There’s four of us and one of him.  It’s not that complicated.”

“There are two of us,” Grany protested.  

“No there isn’t.”

“By all means, little dragon,” Remington said.  “Come and see what I have up my sleeves.”

“I’ve been in this business long enough to know when someone has a plan and when they’re just talk,” Ruel growled.  “You may think you have what it takes to back up your words, but I don’t need anything to back up mine, because I can destroy you with words alone.  Just three words, Smisse, and not even Yugo will be able to save you.”

Yugo looked at Ruel quickly.  He had to be bluffing, but he sounded too confident.  Three words?  Words to a spell?  Enutrofs were stronger underground, but Ruel had never favored magic much.  

“Now you have piqued my curiosity, Enutrof.  If words be the sound of death, speak on.”

_You are...a jerk._  No, that was four.   _Not even Yugo will be able to save you?_  What did _that_ mean?

Then it clicked.

“He’s bluffing!” Yugo said suddenly.  

“What?” Ruel started.  “No I’m—”

“Yes, you are,” he said meaningfully.  Adamaï and Amalia looked at him in confusion, and Remington, he seemed more concerned with Yugo’s denial than with Ruel’s declaration.  But if there was one thing Yugo gained from his honest upbringing, it was the inability to lie convincingly.  “But that doesn’t matter, because I thought of something that will satisfy everyone.  Remington, if you’re really a middle man as Ruel said, then some other group of bad guys are coming along to trade the Eniripsa princess for...for whatever it was you wanted, right?”

Remington looked from him to Ruel and back again, still curious about Ruel’s magic words, but suddenly worried that they might work.  “Let us suppose that this is so.”

“And if these are really classy bad guys you’re working with, then they’re going to double cross you so they don’t have to pay you.”

“There is an element of danger,” he admitted.  

“And if these guys know you, they’ll be expecting you to double cross them, so they’ll be prepared for that.  But they won’t be prepared for _us_.”  Yugo grinned.  “This way, you’ll get paid, like you wanted, we’ll get to rescue a princess, like we wanted, the Eniripsa Kingdom will get to arrest the people responsible, like they wanted, and the people you betrayed will be too busy being in prison to come after you.”

“You’ve gotten shrewd, kid,” Ruel said with admiration.

“That still leaves me with the problem of having you and your merry band at my back, and hoping you don’t betray me.”

“So do we,” Yugo said.  “But I believe in second chances.”

Remington holstered his pistol, but he didn’t let go of it.  “Charming.  But the thing is, kid, I do not.”

Yugo took a deep breath.  “Then believe in me.  Take a leap of faith, Remington, and I promise you I’ll be there.”

Yugo could offer him nothing more than his word, but that was all he had.  The Roublard studied him from the shadows and shared a few whispered words with his brother.  He seemed to weigh every tone, every facial expression, every word said and omitted.  Then he recognized, hopefully, that Yugo could not lie convincingly.

“I accept your offer,” he said at last.  “This should be, if not profitable, then at least interesting.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, another chapter done. I had to make a lot of changes to make it coherent, but I’m satisfied with it. By the way, I don’t want to spoil it for you, but there’s a good chance that Remington might show up in the next chapter, so if anything about him seems out of character, bring it up now so I don’t write him wrong later. Also, in case you’re curious, Ruel wasn’t bluffing about the tree words. Well, maybe he was, but Yugo wasn’t. You’re welcome to guess what they are, and I am definitely not just saying that to get more comments and reviews, because that would be a cheap and dirty trick, and I don’t do cheap, dirty tricks. And let us all ignore the times I ended in a cliff hanger.
> 
> Also, if you’re interested, you can channel lightning with lasers. Do Wakfu beams work like lasers? Well, I have no evidence to the contrary.


	16. Power and Fear

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us.  
> - Marianne Williamson

Remington dragged a large sack behind him through the dirt road.   He feigned carelessness, but he knew that his employers might realize that Cra mercenaries came cheaper than the price he demanded.   

Grany, on the other hand, kept his eyes and ears peeled.   People overlooked bowmeows.   

Remington arrived at the transaction site, an abandoned tower surrounded by blighted lands.   Remington didn’t know what caused the blight.   It had happened a few years back, but people blamed the Ogrest anyway.   No one came near unless they had to.

Remington saw Farkas and Siragas guarding the tower entrance.   Farkas was a Sacrier who smiled a lot and had more teeth than sanity.   Siragas was a big man with an ax.   

“Hey, Remi,” Farkas said, grinning.   “Did you get us anything nice?”

“Sugar and spice and all that,” Remington replied.   “I hope you brought me something horrible in exchange.”

“Sure, sure,” Farkas said.   “So, if you could show me what you have?”

Remington dropped the bag in front of him and leveled his gun at it.   “I would not dare deprive you of the honor of going first.”

Farkas’s kept grinning and his eyes widened.   “Hey, Oz!   Remi’s got goodies!”

A beefy Osamoda peered out at him from a tower window.   Remington’s work required him to know when to be blind, deaf, and most of all, mute.   He knew better than to recognize Ozymandias as the Brakmarian ambassador, and he was professionally amnesiac about Farkas and Siragas as well.   

“You’re late,” Ozymandias said.   

“Caution pays better than punctuality.   I wanted to make sure I wasn’t followed.”

“Were you?”

“I’m here, aren’t I?   Now, I brought yours.   Did you bring mine?”

Ozymandias displayed his hand.   A violet ring caught the light, and while Remington could not hear it whisper, he saw its mouth move.

“Alright,” Remington said.   “Toss it down, and I’ll be on my way.”

“Siragas, inspect the merchandise,” Ozymandias called down.   

Remington stepped back to well beyond ax range as Siragas approached.   “Look all you like,” he said, “but if you try to take the princess out of my line of sight before I’m paid, I’ll start firing.”   

Siragas lifted the bag in one hand, and instead of untying it, he cut it open with his ax.   

Remington only heard it because he expected it, the soft hum of a portal being drawn.   Siragas inspected the empty bag, wondering how it was full a moment ago, and didn’t notice the small boy in a large hat appearing over his head until Yugo kicked him in the head.

_He strikes from above, not behind,_ Remington thought to himself.   That would be useful later, when they weren’t on the same side.   He pointed his guns at Ozymandias in the tower.   Yugo wanted to take prisoners, but if someone got shot in the head—strictly on accident, of course—then it would be a convenient tragedy.

The Brakmarian ambassador ducked behind the window, and if Remington brought the tower down, he might never get the Shushu.

“How typically Roublard,” Ozymandias sneered from out of view.   “You will live to regret this betrayal, briefly.”   The earth shook and the dead forests came to life with the sound of crows, and Remington Smisse opened fire.

WWW

Yugo dunked underneath a swinging ax and rolled beneath the axeman’s legs.   He specialized in fighting people who were stronger than him, but when Remington described the big guy with the ax, Yugo assumed that he would be slow.

The man—what had Remington called him?   Siragas?—swung again, and Yugo jumped out of the way.   If he could get the ax stuck in the ground, Yugo could get some time to catch his breath, but that meant using himself as bait.

Crows swarmed around the tower, and a summoned Crackler dug its way out of the ground.   Remington fired at the Sacrier Farkas, who threw knives in return, but they needed something decisive before the Osamoda could summon more animals.   Yugo carried Ruel’s bag on his back and could let him out when they needed a surprise, but he didn’t know how many more surprises his enemies had left.   

“That was really good!” Yugo called to Siragas.   “I felt the wind on that one.   A little bit faster and you’d have cut my head off.”   If he could lead his opponent away from the tower, he’d be able to zaap back and take out Ozymandias before the axeman had time to double team Remington.   

Siragas slowed to a stop.   “ _Cut_.”   He trembled and the veins in his massive arms bulged.   “ _Head_.”   He looked down at Yugo as though seeing him for the first time.   “ _Execute._ ”

Yugo opened a portal at his feet and fell through to avoid the next strike, but when he reappeared, Siragas came after him without slowing down.   The ax no longer stopped, but whirled in one continuous swing.   

_Well, at least he’s chasing me_ , Yugo thought.   He quit dodging in favor of an all out retreat. 

Meanwhile, Remington struggled to keep the Sacrier at a distance while shooting at the Crackler whenever he had the time.   “You know, it would have been really helpful to have that dragon right about now.”   He threw his Shushu dagger at his opponent, who caught it in his teeth.   “I’m just saying.”

WWW

Adamaï flew towards the Eniripsa palace as fast as his scaraleaf wings could carry him.   Well, him and the squealing princess on his back.   Amalia kept up with him through her weird Sadida vine-surfing trick, not that Adamaï would have left her behind if she couldn’t keep up.   Of course not.

“When we get there, leave the talking to me,” Amalia said.   “No offense, but you’re as diplomatic as a Bwork and would have them rising from the ruins of their palace to wage war on you in ten minutes.”

“Thanks.   That was _very_ diplomatically—”

 “Faster!   Faster!” the Enirpsa princess on his back squealed.   

Adamaï growled in frustration.   “You have wings, fly faster on your own.”   He had cancelled his tracking spell as soon as he found Livda, and all the unwanted side effects went with it.   She was a small human with wings, but besides that, she was like any other.

“Fly upside down!”

“Fine!   If it will shut you up, then fine!”   He swung upside down and the girl grabbed onto his one good horn, screaming ecstatically.   If she fell off and broke her neck, then that would waste the entire trip, but what were the chances of that happening?   And besides, she had wings, right?   “Anyway, after we get to the palace, I’m going back to the others.”

Amalia jumped from one vine to another beside him.   “Sure, because the one thing they need right now is a giant flaming monster destroying everything.”

WWW

The Crackler stomped, shaking the earth and making Yugo lose his footing.   It raised its fist to smash Remington to dust, and Siragas raised his ax to slice through Yugo’s neck.   He opened a portal in front of him, and the Crackler’s fist plowed through the portal into the axeman at the same time Remington fired through the portal, nearly hitting Yugo.

“Hey!   Be careful with that!”

Remington jumped out of the way of the Sacrier and tried to shoot him.   “Right, because the last thing we want is for someone to get _hurt_ when we’re fighting for our lives.”   The Crackler pulled its arm out and tried to step on him.   “You focus on your fight, and I’ll focus on mine.”

Siragas climbed to his feet and charged.   Yugo jumped through a portal halfway between him and Remington.   He took the havensack off his back and dropped it on the ground.

“Ruel!” he shouted into it.   “Get out of there!   We need your help!”

Ruel stuck his head out of the sack.   “Hey, Yugo, guess what!   I found my stash of trading cards!   I thought I lost them when the king confiscated all my loot, but he just put them in his own bag, and now they’re mine again!”

“That’s great.   See that guy coming towards us?”

“The one with the ax?”

“Yeah.   I need you to stall him.”

“What?   Why can’t you get someone else to do it?”

“There is no one else!”

“Oh.”   Ruel frowned.   “It’s times like this I miss the rest of our team.”

“Me too.   Can I count on you?”

He climbed out of the havensack.   “Fine, fine.   I’ll see what I can do.”

“Thanks.”   He zaaped to Remington at the tower’s base.   “Hey Remington!   Let’s switch out!”

Remington maneuvered between the Crackler’s legs while shooting at the Sacrier.   “You think I can’t handle these two?”

“I know you can,” Yugo said.   “But you’re the only one here who’s met their boss.   Besides, he still needs to pay you, right?”

Remington grinned and headed towards the tower.   “A word of advice on the Sacrier, kid,” he said, turning back.   “They say the only way to win is to deny them battle.”

“Um, okay.   Good luck to you, too.”

WWW

The last thing Ruel wanted to do was get chopped in half, so he jumped out of the way when the big angry fellow came charging towards him.   He could have tripped him with his shovel, but he seemed plenty antagonized already.

“You know, there’s a lot of good money in being a lumberjack.   I don’t know if it’d suit you, but it’s a stable job, lots of fresh air.   You should look into it.”

Siragas swung his ax at him, screaming incoherently.   _Great.   At this rate, I’m going to be running around in circles for the next twenty minutes._   Which sucked, because the second to last thing Ruel wanted to do was cardio.

“I don’t know how many fights you’ve been in, but if I’ve learned anything in my travels, it’s that people like you and me never determine the major outcome in these things.   If you like, we could swing our weapons around in the air, and no one would notice that we weren’t really fighting.”

The axeman froze, and stared at him with far too much focus.   “I remember you.”

“Those three words have never taken me anywhere good, so let me just say that all Enutrofs look alike.   We can barely tell ourselves apart.   I once switched places with my best friend for a week growing up, and his parents never noticed.   After I found out what he did to my room, we stopped being friends, but—”

“Ruel Stroud,” he said.

“I have never heard that name before in my life,” Ruel said.   “I’m, uh, Rezenebe.   Rezenebe Knox.”

“You were to be shortened in the field of games in the city of Brakmar.   You failed.   _I_ failed.”   He readied his ax.   “I will not fail now.”

“Oh wait, you’re, you’re...you look different without your mask, but yeah, I remember you had a big name in Brakmar.   Why’d you leave?”   He didn’t really know anything about Brakmar’s head executioner, he avoided places with people less honest than he was, but the last time he visited, crowds had cheered the man.   In any case, every moment Ruel spent talking to the him was a moment he wasn’t being decapitated.

The executioner screamed and lunged at him and screamed and _screamed_.   “Oh, great, cardio,” Ruel muttered, dodging.   He screamed again and again, and as he screamed, Ruel began to piece together a single word.

“ _Guillotine_.”

WWW

Yugo didn’t know how much time Remington would need to take care of Ozymandias, but the Sacrier, Farkas, didn’t try to follow him into the tower.   Yugo didn’t know much about Sacriers, but if Kriss was any indication, it would take a lot to wear him down.   Yugo knew a lot about Cracklers, though, and none of it was good.

On the bright side, Farkas was out of knives.   How much trouble could one unarmed Sacrier be?

The Sacrier lunged at him, his face split in a grin.   Yugo zaaped away and jumped off of the Crackler’s head.   

“Are you going to fight me, kid?” Farkas asked.   “Or are we playing tag?”

“I love tag!   Are you it?”   If Farkas was willing to underestimate him, then so much the better.   

“No, I’m not,” Farkas said.   “I’m just hungry, and victory and defeat both taste the same.”   He bit into his wrist and ripped off his skin, and when he bled, his blood crawled out like an internal worm.   “Let’s eat.”

He used his blood like a whip and managed to latch onto Yugo’s ankle.   If he tried to jump through a portal, Farkas could just pull him back, so he did the next best thing.   He opened up a portal and dropped the Crackler’s foot through.   The Crackler stumbled, off balance, and left Farkas flattened in a crater.   

Yugo superimposed two portals at the Crackler’s chest.   “I’m really sorry about this.”   He blasted Wakfu through it, leaving it a pile of rubble.   He glanced back at Ruel to see how he was faring against Siragas when he heard a voice behind him.

“ _Endure.   And in enduring, grow strong._ ”

Farkas stood grinning, with blood covering his skin and teeth.   Beside him, the Crackler’s head levitated into the air as its body reformed beneath it.

Yugo sighed.   “You know, I’m just surprised you didn’t fuse with the Crackler and wear him as a suit.”   Oh well.   He just needed to stall them until Remington beat their boss.   It only _looked_ like they were stalling him instead.

WWW

Amalia arrived at the Enirpsa palace with Livda still on Adamaï’s back.   She had hoped the Enirpsas to be glad to see their princess returned safely, because even though she wasn’t as fixed on the hero’s welcome as some other members of the Brotherhood, staying at a palace would have been nice after all the weeks on the road.   And they were glad to see her.   Adamaï, not so much.

“Sweet mercy!   It’s back!”

“Quick!   Call the guards!”

“We are the guards!”

“Call more guards!”

“They’re still in the hospital from the last time that thing came through here!”

Amalia shot the dragon a dark look.   “Adamaï?   What did you do here?”

“I told you, I trespassed.”

“And sent a whole bunch of people to the hospital?”

“They tried to detain me for trespassing,” he said, “which they take very seriously here.”

Amalia sighed and turned to the guards.   “Look, I think we got off on the wrong foot.   The dragon can be a bit rough before you get to know him...and after you get to know him, but he means well.   We all do, and what we meant to do was rescue your princess, and here she is.   Say hi to the guards, Livda.”

“Hi to the guards!” Livda said from Adamaï’s back.

“Are you going to get off of me?” Adamaï demanded.   “We’re here already.”

“No!   I’s a dragon rider now!”

“You’re demeaning is what you are.”

“I’m not mean!   You’re mean!”

Amalia gritted her teeth.   When they decided to rescue the Enirpsa princess, she had expected the girl to be, well, more of a princess instead of just some little kid.   It wasn’t even her age that was the problem; when Amalia was her age, she still had a distinct sense of her responsibilities.

“Anyway,” she continued, “I’m sure that her Majesty the Queen would be happy to know that her daughter is back safely, so why don’t you tell her?”   It would be best if the queen saw them personally.   She wasn’t any more impressed with the guards than she was with their princess, and wouldn’t have been surprised if they ended up with the story that Livda wandered back on her own.

“She has a point,” one of the guards admitted.

“Thank you.”

“I don’t know,” another guard said.   “After what that thing did to the queen, maybe we should just tell Surazal.”

Amalia looked down at the dragon and glared at him again.   “ _Adamaï!_ ”

WWW

Remington scaled the staircase of the abandoned tower.   Crows filled every window, watching him.   It would have been the perfect opportunity for a trap.   Had their positions been reversed, and Remington knew that someone was hunting him through only one entrance, he would have filled that entrance with something horrible.   

Knowing that didn’t help, though.

“Sneak attack!”

A knife plunged into his back, twisted, and ripped out.   Grany jumped from his shoulder, snarling, onto the Sram behind him.   Remington pulled out his guns, but he couldn’t shoot at the Sram without risking hitting his brother.

“Grany!   Return!”

His brother jumped back to his shoulder and he fired, but the Sram disappeared into the shadows.

“Grany return?” Grany repeated.   “What am I now, a pet?”

“You were embarrassing yourself.   How many times do we have to go over this?   Go for the eyes!”  His back flared with pain where the Sram stabbed him.  Great.  He managed to face off against a Sacrier and a Crackler for five minutes straight without a scratch, and after one careless moment…

“I couldn’t reach them!   Did you not see his skull mask?   I’m pretty sure that was made from an actual skull.”

“No I didn’t, because you were in the way keeping me from a clear shot at the guy.”

“Right, because shooting at someone’s kneecaps is beneath you.”

Remington hesitated.   “Shut up.”

He leaned against the stone wall, keeping an eye on both sides of the stairwell, hoping that the pressure would keep him from bleeding out too quickly.   He’d need a few pints of blood afterwards at this rate, and a new kidney.

“Oh, there was a Sram behind you,” his Shushu dagger said.   He had managed to retrieve it from the Sacrier, and he wondered why he bothered.

“Thanks.”

“Just thought you might want to know.”

Blood pooled at his feet.   Crows eyed him with growing interest.   “Again, thanks.”

He focused on the darkness for any sign of movement, and waited.

WWW

Yugo had hoped that the Sacrier would run low on steam if the fight dragged on for long enough.   That didn’t seem to be happening.   He used the Crackler as cover, but having cover that wanted to kill him was a dangerous game, not that he had any safe ones left.

Farkas shot a tendril of blood at him, snagging the Crackler’s ankle next to him.   Yugo jumped out of the way, stepping off the Sacrier’s forehead as he flew past, but he messed up his landing.   His foot slipped, and he turned in time to see Farkas throw a boulder at him that he couldn’t dodge.   He drew a portal to deflect it, but as soon as he closed it, he saw the Crackler’s foot coming to kick him in his, well, everything.

It said something about how hard he was hit that he woke up while he was still in the air.

Yugo drew a portal to break his momentum before he hit the ground, but when he landed, he couldn’t get back up.   He was pretty sure he had broken something, and he hoped that it was just ribs.   He had plenty of ribs.   He could spare a few, right?

He saw the Sacrier standing over him, wearing dried blood like a second skin and his face contorted in rage, and Yugo realized that he could die.

“You know, I can’t shake the feeling that you aren’t taking this seriously, kid.”

An energy blast would be a mistake at such close quarters.   He could summon his sword, but without Phaeris to boost his power, it was just a bluff.

“See, even if I kill you, break your neck, rip out your heart and feed it to you, the best I can call this is a draw.”   He clenched a fist and veins in his arm bulged.   “And that makes me _angry._ ”

The Crackler loomed behind him, overshadowing him.

“Keep talking.”   Yugo slapped his hand on the ground and fell through a portal.   A hundred feet in the air, he twisted in the sky and fired a blast at the ground.   Farkas stepped to the side, surprised for the first time, distracted by the blast that carved a hole through the ground, blinded, hopefully, by the light.

Yugo zaaped to the ground and hit Farkas in the back, knocking him into the hole.   He landed on the far side of the hole and rolled onto his back.   It would be only a moment before the Sacrier managed to climb out, and even less than that before the Crackler smashed him.   

The Crackler stood over him with its hand raised, and Yugo stretched forth his own and blasted a hole through its chest.   He zaaped onto its head as the Crackler’s body fell to pieces, covering the hole.   Just as he planned.

The Crackler’s head began to levitate, just as it had before, lifting Yugo with it.   Yugo drew a portal above them, and the Crackler’s head carried them through it.   They appeared above where Siragas was chasing Ruel, and the head, separated from its body, fell to the ground, crushing the axeman.   The impact jolted him pretty badly, and he tasted blood in his mouth—a bit lip, maybe—but that was three problems solved.

Ruel climbed up on the head and sat down next to him.   “Well, that worked out well.   The giant, stone head falling out of the sky gets them by surprise every time.”   A muffled protest came from beneath them.   “Pipe down!” Ruel yelled, and he whacked something with his shovel.

Yugo grinned weakly.   “There’s a Sacrier in a hole buried in some rubble over there.   I’ll need you to keep an eye on him too till I get back.”

“No problem, kid.   This isn’t the first time I’ve needed to babysit the buried, if you know what I mean,” he said with a wink.

“Not really, but okay.”   He pulled himself to his feet.   He didn’t like how his knees trembled, but he’d manage.

“Going after Remington?”

Yugo nodded.   “He might need help.”

“So do you.   If you want some advice from someone with about a hundred times as much experience not dying as you, it helps to save some energy for later.   I’d tell you that it also helps to know when to quit and run like a Wabbit, but I know you wouldn’t listen.”

“We’re almost done.   There’s only one guy left, and that’s only if Remington couldn’t beat him.   I’ll be fine.”

Yugo fell into a portal and zaaped to the tower.   Flying was easy; standing was what gave him trouble.   At the rate he was going, he’d end up as a being of pure energy, dragging his body along like a shadow.   

He landed at the tower’s entrance as gently as he could.   He could have started out at the top and worked his way down, but he’d rather run into Remington before he faced the Osamoda.

“You’re not what I expected, Yugo the Eliatrope,” a voice said.   “I look forward to reporting about you to my superiors, should you survive.”

He realized that the voice came from one of the crows that filled the tower.   It just opened its beak and words came out.   It was weird seeing it talk without its lips moving, but crows didn’t really have those, did they?

“Well, you’re Brakmar’s ambassador to Eniripsa, right?   So all you’d know about me would have been from when I played Boufbowl there, and I can’t use magic in _Boufbowl._   That’s cheating.”   He zaaped further up the stairs.   It was certainly easier than climbing them normally.   “If it means anything, you’re not what I expected either.   As an ambassador, you’re supposed to be the Eniripsas’ friend, right?   Where’d the kidnapping gig come from?”

“I have no issue with the Eniripsa people.   I have only respect for them, and Brakmar has need of their assistance.   Their ruler, though, could be more cooperative.   It’s not morality.   It’s politics.”   A different crow carried his voice.   

“So the ends justify the means?” Yugo asked.   “Or is the many versus the few?   It’s okay to hurt one or two people as long as you’re helping more, is that it?”   Everyone had a rationale for hurting people, but Yugo could never understand them.

“You could make that argument, if rulers were people.”

Yugo cocked his head.   “Aren’t they?”

“By their own admission, they are not.   By commanding, the king claims to be better than his subjects, and the subjects, by obeying, accept that claim.   If you kill a king, is that murder?   No, but regicide, which they punish much more harshly.   And if a king kills a person, is that murder?   No, but an execution or an act of war, and both fall under his superhuman right.   When Queen Nillicinep accepted the power to slay and save thousands with the wave of her hand, she abandoned the right to humanity.”

“Right to humanity?” Yugo repeated.   “You got a messed up world view.   Or should I call you that?   Because I don’t see you keeping that job for long.”

“That was inevitable.   If I succeeded, we would not need an ambassador to the Eniripsas.   Now, my successor will apologize profusely for my rogue actions, and the affairs of nations will continue unchanged.   What happens to me will depend on whether I can return to my superiors with or without your head.”

“Huh.   Does Brakmar want my head?”  Apparently, execution was sport there, too.

“Your head would simplify things.   Please die.”

Three things happened at once.   Behind him, he heard a voice saying, “Sneak attack!” and to his side he saw a flash of red light and heard a gunshot.

“See?   Kneecaps work.”

“Grany?” he asked, peering into a dark room on the side of the stairs.   “Remington!”   Behind him, he saw a Sram clutching his leg.   “That was close.”

“That was crazy.   By all means, stop to talk to the birds.   Perfectly safe.”   He sat on the floor with his back against the wall.   He didn’t look well.

“Remington?   Are you okay?”

“Dandy.   But watch your step.   My blood is slippery.”

Yugo looked down at the slick floor.   “You’re right.   We should have brought Adamaï.   Splitting up the Brotherhood was a mistake when we didn’t know what we were up against.”

“Well, it’s too late to change that.”

“Yeah.”   He could barely stand, and Remington couldn’t even do that.   Even if he didn’t need Ruel to keep an eye on Ozymandias’s friends, things didn’t look good.   He thought about what he had said about knowing when to run like a Wabbit.   “We need to get you out of here while we still can.”

Remington laughed weakly.   “Cowardice from you, kid?”

“It’s not worth the risk.”

“Running has risk too, for me.   If Ozymandias manages to get the word out that I betrayed him, then the Brakmarian half of the underground is going to be after me, and I wouldn’t last the month.   I was counting on you, kid.   Are you going to let me down?”

One of his weapons laughed.   “Oh, that’s cold.”

“Shut up.”

“You’re right,” Yugo admitted.   “I made you a promise, and I need to keep it.   After all, I’d be a pretty lousy king if I can’t be trusted.”

“King?   That’s pretty ambitious, kid.”

“I wish.”   He turned to leave.   “By the way, you said that he was going to pay you with a Shushu weapon.   Do you know what it does?”

Remington shook his head.   “Finding out is half the fun, so just be prepared for anything.”

“Right,” Yugo said.   “I can do that.”

As long as he was going to be prepared, he activated his Wakfu vision, like he should have done in the first place.   He saw a man at the top of the tower and a whole bunch of crows, but nothing unexpected.   Since he could see Ozymandias and Ozymandias, through his crows, could probably see him, there wasn’t any point in dragging things out.

He drew a portal straight to the top.

The Osamoda sat on a wooden chair in the darkness.   The windows were boarded closed, and he gazed through the crack of light that broke through.   The rustle of feathers surrounded them as Ozymandias turned to face him.   He probably would have looked more concerned if Yugo hadn’t lost his footing when he came out of the portal.

“Shall we end this, Yugo the Eliatrope?   Or do you have any more questions?   If you do, ask them now.”

“No, I already said everything I wanted to,” he said, standing up.   “No, wait, actually I have one more.   Have you ever considered becoming a ventriloquist?   You know, stick a crow inside a puppet and hold it on your lap?   You’d be a hit at birthdays.”

Ozymandias scowled as though he thought Yugo was joking, and the thousand crows dropped from their perches and crashed into him.   Yugo became a mess of feathers, beaks, and clawing, scratching talons.

“Did you not see those birds the entire way up here?”   Ozymandias sighed.   “Why do people ignore _everything_ put in front of them?”

Yugo didn’t know if he was lying on the ground or if the crows had lifted him into the air.   All he knew was that he was screaming.   His skin was being shredded and he was _screaming._

Then he burst with energy, and fell to the floor with a thump.   He felt light on his face.  He opened his eyes, and saw the sun where the ceiling used to be.  The crows were gone, leaving behind nothing but black feathers that stuck to the scratches on his arms.

“Are you going to surrender?”   Yugo forced himself to his feet.   He thought it would be impossible, but it was just as hard as before.   No matter how much he gave, he always had a little bit left.   “I don’t want to hurt you, but I don’t think you’re any more sturdy than the roof was.”

“I disagree,” Ozymandias said.   “I think you do want to hurt me.   People like you always turn to the light, but there is darkness that you can never turn away from.   And that is where you’ll find me.”

The Osamoda stretched forth his hand, and in the sunlight Yugo could see him clearly for the first time, him, and the ring on his finger.   The ring that he had seen twice before.

_Ombrage._

“Hello, Yugo!   My, how you’ve grown!”

He grinned weakly.   “Is this your trump card?   She already tried her trick on me before and it didn’t work.”

“Oh, but Yugo, dear, people _change_.”

His shadow flickered, and he felt _cold_ , all the way through.

“There’s something in your soul that wasn’t there before,” Ombrage said.   She laughed.   “My, how you’ve grown!”

He needed to get away, fall through a portal, or...but he couldn’t...

A dagger flew through the air, and Ozymandias fell to his knees, screaming.   Remington stood in the doorway, leaning on the wall for support.   

“You got rid of the birds,” he said.   “Good.   I hated those things.”   He walked towards them, wincing with each step, and picked up something narrow and bloody that had rolled towards him.   He slid the ring off of it and tossed it to Ozymandias.   “All I want is the ring, but you may need a hand picking up the rest of your fingers.”   He looked down at Yugo.   “You look like you could use a hand too,” but he put Ombrage on a gloved finger instead of offering one.

“I’ll manage,” Yugo said.   “Be careful with that ring, though.   It’s dangerous.”

“I’m counting on it.”   He admired the ring in the sunlight.   “It should be, after all I went through to get it.”   He raised his hand toward Ozymandias before Yugo realized what he intended.

“Remington!   What are you doing?”

Ozymandias’s blue skin turned grey and his white hair grew long and straggled as his shadow disappeared.   A low snarl fell from his sagging lips.

“I’m taking a prisoner,” Remington replied.   “That is what you intend to do with these people, isn’t it?   I prefer to tie up all loose ends, but I suppose that’s the cost of working with others.”   He looked down at Yugo with a far too confident smirk.   “Trust me.   If I could pick any ghoul minion to do my bidding, why would I pick him?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And thus ends the longest fight scene I have ever written. I’m not planning on writing another one for the rest of the story, but I wasn’t planning on writing this one at all, and then I did. The line about denying your enemies battle was used in Stargate once, I’m told, but I hear that it’s also a Chinese proverb or something. I actually heard it for the first time in real life, and the guy who said it didn’t reference anything. “In enduring grow strong,” is directly from Planescape Torment. Dak’kon has some of the best lines in a game full of great lines.  
> Also, I big thank you to Suricatessen for editing. When he sends me a chapter, I read it and think, “Wow, that was pretty good. I wonder how I can make it slightly better?” and then a week later I think, “That’s it!” When I send him a chapter, he sends it back finished the next day. It’s really quite phenomenal.


	17. What is Right

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Somebody has to start. Somebody has to step forward and do what is right, because it is right. If nobody starts, then others cannot follow.."
> 
> ― Brandon Sanderson, The Way of Kings
> 
> "Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right."
> 
> ― Isaac Asimov, Foundation

Yugo felt worried the whole way back, but for nothing. Remington kept his word for possibly the first time since they met and had released the Osamoda, the Sram, the Sacrier, and the Executioner. Yugo would have offered him a place in the Brotherhood of the Tofu, but he didn't think he'd want it, and if he wanted to reunite with Tristepin and Evangelyne, having Remington around would cause problems.

He didn't know what Remington wanted with Ombrage, but he wanted to trust him. He knew how much damage Ombrage could cause, but he knew what evil was, too, and evil would not have stayed in Shukrute for his brother. Ombrage could turn someone into a ghoul as long as they had a spec of darkness in them, but a spec of light had to be at least as powerful.

By the time he and Ruel returned to the palace, Adamaï and Amalia were there waiting for them.

"Hey, bro, how was your trip back?"

"The trip back was fine," Adamaï replied. "It wasn't until we got here that we had trouble. We had to go through the entire Eniripsa bureaucracy and every overprotective guard they had standing."

"Who wouldn't have had a problem with us if you two hadn't wrecked the place the first time you came here," Amalia added.

"We didn't wreck the place!" Yugo protested.

"Yeah! Yugo made me do all the work!" Adamaï rolled his eyes and turned back to him. "So that was our fight. How was yours?"

Yugo shrugged. "It wasn't anything we couldn't handle."

"You don't look like you handled it," Amalia noted. "You look like you got in a fight with a briar patch. Repeatedly."

"It wasn't a briar patch, it was a flock of birds," Yugo said, standing up a bit straighter. "And I won."

Amalia turned to Ruel. "And you look like you were asleep the whole time."

"I couldn't steal the glory right when Yugo needed it most!" Ruel protested. "Just how selfish do you think I am?"

"Very." She sighed. "I never thought I'd say this, but you were right, Adamaï."

"Yes," he agreed. "Yes I was."

"About what?" Yugo asked.

"It doesn't matter."

"I told her that I should go back to see if you needed back up."

"Like I said, it doesn't matter," Amalia said again.

"You should have," Yugo agreed. "You would have had fun. They had a Crackler too."

"Really?"

"Yep."

"But that's my thing!"

"I know!"

"Well, my Crackler could have beaten their Crackler."

"Probably. It stopped fighting after I ran off with its head."

"Really? So it was an amateur Crackler."

"Pretty much."

"Anyway," Amalia said, "after we broke through the ignorant density of guards and bureaucrats, Queen Nillicinep agreed to see you."

He blinked. "Really? When?"

"As soon as you got back, so now."

"Now, now? Alright, let's go!" He looked down at his arms that were covered in scratches. If he had a mirror, he'd probably find his face in the same shape. "Or, should we get cleaned up first?"

"Naw," Ruel said. "You got those fighting princess nappers. Or princess napper employers, at least. I'd recommend a neck brace if I thought you could fake it, but seriously, it makes you look heroic, and you need all the look you can get. Besides, Eniripsas have a soft spot for injured people. It makes them all sympathetic, if you know what I mean." He winked. "But you could wear that expensive cloak you bought. I know it's somewhere around here." He rummaged through his haven sack.

"Expensive?" Amalia said. "It was the cheapest thing they had."

"Something can be relatively cheap and still be absolutely expensive. Aha! Here it is!" He pulled out a blue cloak and wrapped it around Yugo's shoulders. "There. Now you look all royal and presentable."

He grinned. "Alright. Let's go."

"No, Yugo," Amalia said. "She didn't agree to see us, she agreed to see you."

"What? But..." He looked around at his friends. Ruel shrugged and Adamaï frowned and looked away. "Why?"

"Honestly, I don't know," Amalia said. "But you need to talk to her about an Eliatrope issue, not a Sadida one, and Ruel has always been many things besides presentable." Ruel nodded in agreement. "And Adamaï..." She looked down at his brother. "Let's just say he didn't make a good impression last time he was here."

"But if it weren't for him, we never would have—"

"Bro, it's fine," Adamaï said. "I never liked these fancy meetings anyway, and I've been to more of them than you have. Besides, I want to bring our people back as much as you do, but you're the king. There are some things you have to do alone."

"I...okay, you're right. I can do this." He took a deep breath. "I'll be fine." He followed a pair of Eniripsa guards further into the palace, and left his friends behind.

It seemed like everywhere he looked, he saw a bit of burnt rug or scorched stonework, and he winced. Breaking into the palace had seemed like a good idea at the time—heck, it was their only idea at the time—but he hadn't expected it to require so much breaking. It was...clumsy, and every guard that he passed on the way to the throne room that didn't have a dirty look for him had a frightened one.

Then a five-year-old Eniripsa flew past him holding a blueberry pie and a pink-bowed bowmeow pursued by two caretakers who yelled, "No, Princess! Don't eat those!" and Yugo smiled.

His escorts opened the throne room doors, and for the second time that day, he stood in the presence of a queen. Nillicinep sat on a red-cushioned white ivory throne in a silver dress with calm, almost cold regality. He could barely recognize her from the distraught mother he had taken by surprise in her daughter's bedroom.

"You have my gratitude, Yugo, for returning my daughter safely," Nillicinep said. "But do not mistake that for the gratitude of the Eniripsa kingdom."

Yugo hadn't expected conditional thanks, but he tried to cover his hesitation. "Of course not. That was just...the sort of thing we do." And that was true. While his friends were excited about the more pragmatic consequences, even if Livda hadn't been royalty, they would have taken the detour to bring her home.

But that didn't add up. When Livda was missing, her mother had shut down have her kingdom looking for her, so she couldn't suddenly pretend to be indifferent. And Yugo knew she was pretending because of...reasons. What those reasons were, he had no idea. Amalia and Ruel probably would have been able to tell him, but he guessed that was why they weren't invited.

Queen Nillicinep nodded. "Good. Now I understand that you have a matter of state to discuss with me."

"Yes, it's about the return of my people."

She nodded again. "Qilby explained the issue back when he was king."

Yugo tried to hide his surprise. Was? She could have known that Qilby wasn't king anymore from one of two people, and hopefully it was Amalia because the Enutrof king had nothing good to say about him.

"He explained half of it," Yugo said. "He told you our past. Our future is still up to you." He thought that sounded cool. Or did it make him sound too needy? Or did he want to sound needy? He really had no idea what he was doing. Of course, that had never stopped him before, and everything had—mostly—worked out right.

"Do you understand why the prospect of their return worries so many?"

Yugo didn't worry that often, but he did so more than he used to. Just on their way back, he was worried that Remington was going to use his brand new Shushu to turn on them, but even a consistent double-crosser like him only betrayed people when he had something to gain from it. If that's how people saw the Eliatropes, then it was silly for them to assume that his people would turn on them just because they could.

"To be honest, no," he said. "I think a lot of it is that people are happy with the way things are, and they don't want to risk making things worse by changing them."

"Tell me, King Yugo," she said after a pause. "Are your people dangerous?"

He took a breath. He looked to the side to ask Amalia or Ruel for advice, but they were gone. No, he realized. No they aren't. He remembered them, he knew them. They could never be gone no matter how far away they were. He stood up straighter. I am not alone.

Amalia would redefine the term dangerous until she could dismiss it. Ruel would say, "Dangerous? Nah, they're a bunch of orphaned little tykes. Half of them wouldn't hurt a moskito, and the other half couldn't if they tried. Yugo, though, would have to deny it, because even the best answer wasn't always the right one.

"Yes."

Her eyes widened in surprise. "You admit this, but you expect us to welcome a new threat?"

Yugo relaxed into his role. He had done this twice before, and besides, he had a cloak now. If Tristepin had taught him anything, it was that cloaks and capes were cool. "I didn't say we were a threat, I said we were dangerous, and thank goodness for that. I just got back from dealing with some people who were threats, and fortunately they were less dangerous than we were."

He realized that he shouldn't remind her that he had saved her daughter too much. It made him look smug and he knew that she hadn't forgotten.

"Those who fear you worry that the Eliatropes came from a time when they were the only people on this world, and would prefer to be the only ones here again."

Yugo made a face of disgust. "That's ridiculous! My best friends are from all over the world, and my own dad is an Enutrof! Why would we want to be alone?"

"Do your people feel the same way?" she asked. "These are not my concerns, per se, but they have been voiced by my allies, and I will need to explain myself to them should I decide to ally with you."

"I get it," he said. He should have asked her what her views were in the beginning. "If that's what your friends think, what do you think?"

"I understand their fear," she said. "But I believe that the situation requires investigation, not panic."

She didn't try to intimidate him like the Xelor Time Lord, or manipulate him like the Enutrof king, she just wanted information.

"Okay. Well, they're my people. If anyone can speak for them, I can." Also, if they had wanted to wipe out everyone on the World of Twelve, they could have sided with Qilby, but it didn't seem like a good idea to bring that up. "I've been to Emrub. I've met my people, and good people around the world have nothing to fear from us."

She tilted her head curiously. "Good people? Who are good people?"

He looked at her and opened his mouth to say, Isn't it obvious? Good people were good, and bad people were bad. It was tautological. Intuition. Instinct. He had spent his whole life believing that what he felt was right was right, and while even some of his friends thought that his views were too simplistic, Yugo never saw why they needed to be complicated.

But then he met Ombrage for the third time. The second time he faced her, she could not take his shadow, and the last time, she could. And every day in between, Yugo had done exactly what he felt was right.

Of course he had to trust his instincts—it wasn't like he had anyone else's to go on—but could he risk his friends' world and his dad's world and his world on something that was even slightly flawed? He knew that the Eliatrope people could bring the World of Twelve together like nothing before, and each child in Emrub had the same potential to do good that he had. But he also knew he could be wrong.

There was something, though, that he could trust. He always kept his word.

"All people," he said, "good and bad, have nothing to fear from us. As long as I am king, my people will not go to war with any other kingdom."

Queen Nillicinep leaned forward in her throne. "And if a kingdom invades my own kingdom, or your allies, the Sadida, and they ask you for help, what would you do?"

"I would fight, if I thought it was right. And my brother Adamaï could come with me, and Phaeris the Powerful is always free to do whatever he likes, but the Eliatrope people would not."

"And if Brakmar or Enutrof declare war on your kingdom, would you fight back?"

"No. If negotiations failed, then we'd..." We'd find another way. But there was only one other way. Adamaï would hate it and many of his people would feel betrayed, but they wanted to make things like they were before their people fell. Yugo wanted to make his people better than that. "If negotiations failed, then the world wasn't ready for us anyway. I would send my people back to Emrub and try to establish them again in the future."

Nillicinep's eyes narrowed. "Are you certain of that, King Yugo?" There was surprise and skepticism in her voice, but Yugo heard a bit of respect, too.

He closed his eyes and willed himself certain. "I am. We have the power to escape out of time when we have to. The people who would get themselves killed trying to fight us don't."

"Some nations would declare war just to drive you out."

"Would they?" Yugo stood up a bit taller. "If they trust me to keep my word about that, then they'd trust me when I say that I'm not their enemy, right?"

Silence fell in the throne room. Yugo felt like he should say something, but he didn't know what.

WWW

The boy seemed guileless, but in Nillicinep's experience, two kinds of people played the game; those who pretended to know far more than they revealed, and those who pretended to be far more honest than they were. Qilby was one of the first. He had spoken with an air of infinite wisdom and claimed divine knowledge, or beyond divine knowledge, and when the Council had refused him, he had smiled with a mere, scientific interest. Nillicinep was part of the second group.

Yugo, though, was a child. There were child kings before, but they'd had kingdoms and advisors and emissaries to send in their steads. Yugo had his traveling companions. Sadidas used flowery language to cover a tangle of roots, though, while Enutrofs buried any truth they might have under a mountain of nonsense, if not lies. And dragons spoke fire. That was why she decided that it would be best to speak with the young king alone.

The problem, though, was that Nillicinep knew so little about him. The Eliatropes themselves were extinct if not mythic until a few months ago, and their king wasn't much better. Yugo had been invisible to the world until he came out of nowhere as the star player in a Bontarian Boufbowl game, and had struck the world in much the same way. The Brotherhood of the Tofu, as his friends called themselves, had saved the Sadidas from a rampaging Xelor, and the Eniripsa Kingdom's alliance with the Sadidas would have been enough to support the Eliatropes if it weren't for her alliance with the Enutrofs. King Enitalp had made his position clear.

Her choice today could make one of those two kingdoms her enemy, and the Eniripsas strived to be enemies of no one. And yet, Yugo had bled to return the daughter that she had before forsaken as dead. That alone would have been enough forge an alliance if Nillicinep was a good person, but more than that, she needed to be a good queen.

Of course, there was one matter that every detractor of the Eliatrope cause ignored. The Enutrof Kingdom claimed that the Eliatropes wanted to rob them blind or had robbed them, although they said that about everyone, and Brakmar believed that the Eliatropes came as conquerors. They pointed to the dragons and said that a nation of people with their power could subjugate the world, but if the Eliatropes were so dangerous, would they need anyone's permission? No, a nation as powerful as Brakmar supposed could claim the World of Twelve as their own and dare the other kingdoms to challenge them.

If Yugo and the Eliatropes caused harm, it would not be by their intent, but any disturbance, no matter how innocent, could could cause harm in a world so fragile. If they found themselves in the wrong alliance, they could upset the balance that kept the world at peace by following their allies into war, but if they promised to do nothing at all...

Yugo stood in front of her, waiting for her to say something. "What do your people need?"

"Time," he said. "Time doesn't exist in Emrub, and we can't get far without it."

"So they need to leave. And from the Eniripsa Kingdom specifically?"

"Oh. Peace? To get out of Emrub, we just need the Eliacube and a Dofus, and we already have those, so we're just waiting for the right time so we can jump in without making too big a splash. And it's like what my friend Ruel always says, if you're housewarming gift is an angry mob, you've moved into the wrong neighborhood."

"And you think that an alliance with Eniripsa will assure peace for your people?"

Yugo looked up at her hopefully. "Doesn't it?"

Nillicinep measured the balance of nations. Brakmar and Enutrof had already sided against the Eliatropes. Sadida supported them and, for reasons only they knew, Xelor did too. Bonta opposed Brakmar out of principle just as Osamoda opposed Sadida, but their reverence for dragons might change that. Cra would never oppose Sadida as long as they needed their wood for their bows, and while Iop always looked for a fight, they wanted challenges more than enemies. Sacrier was an old ally of Brakmar, as was Sram, but the rest of the nations, Ecaflip, Pandawa, and Feca could go either way or remain neutral. And then there was New Sufokia, which she knew almost nothing about except that they too were returning and they didn't care how "big a splash" they made.

Still, Yugo had four nations for and against him already. If Nillicinep tipped the scale in his favor, the neutral kingdoms might follow her and the ones that opposed the Eliatropes might back down. And if Yugo remained true to his word about pacifism, the Eliatropes' return could have few negative long term consequences.

"Every nation has a place in the World of Twelve," she said. "We Eniripsas are healers, the Sadida watch the forests, and there are scientists, warriors, and spies among the Xelors, Iops, and Srams respectively. What part will the Eliatropes play?"

"We're protectors."

Nillicinep frowned. "I thought you were pacifists." Was he making it up as he went along? No, he seemed to be deciding things as he went along.

"Well, yeah. My people didn't wait ten thousand years in Emrub just to come out and die in someone else's war, but Nox wasn't a kingdom and his army nearly wiped out the Sadidas, and Rushu wasn't either and he still tried to invade at the Crimson Claws." Her eyes widened at that, but she didn't interrupt. "If we were around two hundred years ago, I don't know if we could have prevented Ogrest's Chaos, but we could have evacuated people from the lowlands faster, and if the Mechasms or something else from the far side of the Krosmoz finds it's way here, they'll find us."

The queen leaned back and mused. The safe choice was to do nothing. If the Eliatropes settled in blood and fire, or were repelled with blood and fire, then let others bleed and burn. But that was not the way of her people. Eniripsa did not sit back and watch others die as long as there were those whom they could save. The return of the Eliatropes could upset half the world, but it was the responsibility of the living to pursue their own happiness, and the responsibility of the Eniripsas to preserve their life. And the Eliatropes had the same right to live as anyone.

She arose from her throne, fluttering her wings slightly to bring her to her feet. "Well, King Yugo, I believe this world could use a nation of protectors, and you may count my people among your allies."

WWW

Yugo burst out of the throne room, his face split in a grin. "It worked!"

"You should never say that right after a deal," Ruel said. "It makes it look like you've gotten away with something."

"What?"

"Ignore him," Amalia said. "As a general rule. But that's great, Yugo, I knew you could do it. Honestly, I'm surprised it took you as long as it did."

"So what happened in there, bro?" Adamaï asked. "Did you have to promise her something horrible or was she just glad you brought her kid back?"

Yugo forced a smile. "Come on. I'll tell you everything." He knew Adamaï wouldn't like what he did, but he'd have to tell him eventually, and he was done keeping secrets.

WWW

Monortem barged into Doctor Nietsneknarf's office, ready to share his breakthrough.

"You're supposed to knock," Svalinn said, following him.

"Knock, knock!" he called out.

"Close enough," she said. "Hey, Doc! You in here? You're not giving yourself experimentals again, are you?"

Doctor Nietsneknarf stumbled around a corner. "That would be fortunate. I always keep careful notes of m-m-my experiments, but that is not the case."

The doctor usually had an enthusiasm that mandated his office's high ceiling, but suddenly he seemed incapable of walking in a straight line.

"If you want fortunate, I have something you'll love." Monortem grinned through the bandages and mask that made facial expressions unnecessary. "I made a breakthrough in the clockwork heart idea we were working on. At this rate, we could make organic life entirely obsolete!"

Svalinn stepped forward. "Are you okay?" she asked. "You look like you tried to eat yourself. Maybe you should see a doctor."

"He is a doctor," Monortem reminded her. It amazed him how she could be so clever in some areas and so forgetful in others.

"I meant a not crazy doctor!"

"Oh," he said. "Well, you should have specified." Honestly, the things people took for granted.

Svalinn rolled her eyes. She was fond of that expression.

"It w-will pass," Nietsneknarf said. "Alth-though, at the moment, I feel like have either been a zombie all afternoon, or I've been kissing one."

"Yeah, that's never fun," Svalinn said.

"It's quite f-facinating." Nietsneknarf turned towards a shelf of jars of organs that he kept on the wall. "I also appear to be missing a kidney."

WWW

"Guards! Guards! A prisoner has escaped!"

Ozymandias closed his eyes in the next cell over. He knew his men wouldn't be happy unless they tried something, but he wished that they'd try something quiet.

A pair of Eniripsas fluttered towards them leisurely. "Everything okay here?"

"No!" Farkas said, feigning panic. "Thade was here a moment ago, and now he's gone."

"Oh. Well, what do you want us to do about that? I mean, I can revoke his cafeteria privileges, but that's about it."

"He may have found a secret passageway," Farkas said. "You should come in here...and check."

"I don't know," the guard said. "What do you think, Illin?"

"Just leave it, Richard," the other guard said. "He'll show up when he gets hungry."

"I don't think this is working," Thade said, reappearing in his cell.

"Dang it, Thade, you had one job!" Farkas snarled.

"I don't want to miss lunch!"

Ozymandias heard a loud thunk as the Sacrier slammed his head against the wall.

"Do you know what I had for breakfast?" Thade continued. "A muffin. And not one of those big ones, either."

"I wish I were dead."

"Sneak attack!"

"Thade, yelling, 'Sneak attack!' and poking me in the back does not count as a sneak attack."

"They took my knives."

Siragas stood up suddenly. "Hey, guard? Farkas wants to trade his life sentence for a death sentence."

"Okay," Richard said.

"I what?"

"And he wants me to shorten him. You people do offer last requests, right? See, I haven't shortened anyone since the Executioner's Guild got outsourced by the guillotine, and I haven't seen my ax in a while, and—"

"Siragas, I do not want my head chopped off."

"But you have the right to die with style!"

"I have the right to escape from this dungeon and leave a trail of blood in my wake!"

"You know what," Illin said, "we have other prisoners to check on, so we'll come back later to see if you need anything." Ozymandias heard the sound of wings approach him. "Hey, Oz! How're you feeling?"

"When I requested a private cell, I assumed I would by isolated audibly as well."

"Yeah, but you're easier to guard this way," Illin said. "But don't feel bad. I got something for you that will cheer you right up!" He held out his hand.

"Those are sticks."

"No they aren't. They're your fingers."

Ozymandias looked at the guard with contempt. "Do you think I can't tell the difference between my fingers and a few sticks?"

"Well, maybe if you stick them onto your hand, you could pretend they're fingers," Illin suggested.

"Besides," Richard added, "It's not our fault you left your fingers behind. You have to admit, that's pretty careless."

"I was...nevermind." Clearly, bribing guards for favors had its limits. "Alright, here's something even your incompetence can't screw up. I need paper and something to write with, preferably a pen, but if you can't manage that, I'll improvise." He needed to write a letter to his king, because if what his crows heard was accurate, then the Eliatrope child would be an even greater player on the world stage.

"Do you want a scribe, too?" the guard asked.

"What?"

"A scribe. To write for you. Because I don't think you can hold a pen with your stubs."

Ozymandias glared at him. He'd do something horrible to that double crossing Smisse, but Brakmar took priority over revenge.

"Yeah, I'll get you a scribe, too. But just because we're friends."

WWW

Bow meows were always stubborn, but Livda had never met one that wanted to become a pie less than Mephisto. If he hadn't been declawed after the cat-apult incident, then she wouldn't even have gotten as far as she did.

"I know you don't like it now, but you will when this is over." She held Mephisto down in the pie and tried to fold the tin around him, but she only had two hands and she needed to keep the bow meow in place. Maybe if she braced him with her foot...

The door opened, and Livda looked up. "Mommy!" Mephisto squirmed out of her grasp and bolted out of her room, leaving blueberry pawprints all over the rug.

"I see Mittens has missed you," she noted.

Mephisto, Livda corrected mentally. She had asked him which name he prefered, and if she spoke bow meow as well as she thought she did, he had said Mephisto. Or "I want to eat that," but that made no sense as a name. Still, Mommy insisted on calling him Mittens, of all things.

"I'm teaching him to be a pie."

"I can see that," Mommy said with a smile. "But does he want to be a pie?"

"Of course he does. He just doesn't know it yet." After all, Mommy always told her that she'd like being a princess, eventually, even though that wasn't nearly as fun as being a dragon rider.

"Maybe he'd rather be a bow meow."

"He can be both, can't he?"

"Yes, but you can't force anyone to be anything they don't want to."

Livda looked up in surprise. "Really? Does that mean I can have my cat-apult back?"

"No."

WWW

"You did what?" Adamaï demanded. "What were you thinking? I mean, what's the point of bringing our people back if they can just kick us out whenever they want? And why are you smiling?"

They were on the open road with the Eniripsa Kingdom behind them and the whole world in front of them. It made it hard to be upset about anything, although Adamaï managed. "Sorry." Yugo frowned, or at least tried to. "Sorry. I just think it turned out pretty well."

"Well? How was that well? You can't tell me that's how you wanted your negotiation to turn out!"

"No," he agreed. "But I was thinking, that if I got everything I wanted, then only I would be happy, and I would hate that."

"How does that even make sense?" Adamaï asked. "Forget that, how does that matter?"

"Well, it's like this," Yugo said. "What I wanted was for people to just agree with me, welcome our people with open arms, and then step aside as we rebuild the Eliatrope Kingdom."

"That sounds like a good thing to want."

"Of course. No one wants bad things."

"People have wanted to kill me before," Ruel said.

"I can attest to that," Amalia said. "Not that it disproves your point."

"Yeah, people have tried to kill all of us," Yugo said. "Soft Oak tried to kill us because his forest was being ravaged and he thought it was Emelka. Grougaloragran tried to kill all of you because he wanted to keep his home safe from intruders."

"Grougaloragran was good," Adamaï said. "Most of the people who tried to kill us weren't."

"Nox wanted a way back to his family, Qilby wanted to not be alone anymore, and I wanted to rebuild the Eliatrope Kingdom. I thought that the best way to do that was to have all the other kingdoms leave us alone so we could build what we had before, and I was wrong. See, before Orgonax, we were the only ones here, but how wonderful is it that now we aren't! I was so focused on what I wanted it felt weird asking different kings to do nothing at all. I should have been asking what they wanted, and now that I can see us as part of a whole, I finally know what our part is!"

Adamaï gave him a blank look. "Yes, but so what? We can discuss independence versus interdependence all day, it won't matter if they can kick us out whenever they want!"

"We don't even know if they want to! Heck, they don't even know if they want to."

Adamaï shook his head. "You may have spent more time with them than I have, but I know enough about them to know this. People are idiots. Nine times out of ten, if they have two choices, they'll come up with a third choice that's dumber than the first two put together."

"I resent that," Amalia said.

"Goddess, Amalia, you complain about them more than I do!"

She hesitated. "Do not."

"Anyway, your resentment is irrelevant."

"I resent that too."

"Go ahead. Anyway, all they need is enough stupid people to go to war with you, and that's the end of all our hopes and dreams."

Yugo smiled. "They won't go to war with us unless they want us to leave, and then they'll have to trust me when I say that we'll leave if they attack and not trust me when I say that we come in peace, all the while knowing that if they're wrong they'll have to deal with the entire Eliatrope Kingdom, and if they're right, they'll have to deal with Phaeris. Stupidity has its limits."

"You've been wrong before."

Yugo hesitated and his face fell. "You're right. I have been wrong before. So, how are you going to fix it?"

"Me? Why me?"

Yugo shrugged. "You're smarter than I am. I've been focusing on making people not want to be our enemies, but there's always going to be the odd one out. So, I need you to come up with a way to make our enemies—what was it you said?—irrelevant."

"Right, because that will be so much easier than making them ash."

"I know you can do it."

Adamaï frowned thoughtfully. He was less likely to complain about a problem after it stopped being a problem and became his problem. "Well, the easy answer would be to use an invisibility spell. It worked out really well for Grougaloragran and Phaeris, until it didn't, and with ten thousand Eliatropes coming in and out all the time, I don't see that lasting. An impenetrable dome that you have to zaap to? That seems gloomy. Hmm. I'll have to talk to Phaeris about it."

"There's no rush. Until then, could you to teach me that tracking spell you used to find Livda?"

"Sure, bro. Who are you looking for?"

Yugo looked down the open road in front of them. It was full of possibilities, just like the future, and each ruler they talked to gave him a better idea of what kind of king he wanted—and needed—to be.

"I'm thinking that I haven't seen Tristepin or Evangelyne in ages. I wonder what they've been up to."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I found out that the Executioner's name is actually Dewitt unless the crowd was actually chanting, "Do it," but it's too late to change that now. I guess that's what happens when you don't do your research. Well, I thought that Siragas sounds cooler. I really have no idea how to do politics, and that was fine for a while because my characters didn't either, but I figured I'd need to establish what was going on in the world stage before I went any further. I hope I didn't lose anyone in there. And, as usual, thanks to Suricatessen for proofreading.


End file.
